Editing Artwork not created in Illustrator

[joslynb17646162]

I have a question about editing artwork that was not created in Illustrator. I have quite a few designs that I have created over the years in a different program. So now I want to start using Illustrator but I can't seem to edit any of the old designs. Just when I think I have it figured out turns out I don't. All I want to do is resize the designs and change the colors. I have the original designs saved as jpg and png files. I followed the first set of instructions here How to import artwork files in Illustrator but I still can't change the color of my design. Does it matter if the original was a jpg or png file? I don't want a white background on the design because they will go on a mockup t-shirt in Photoshop. Can someone point out what I doing wrong here?

[Theresa J]

Illustrator is best at creating and editing vector. Jpegs and png files are bitmap, or raster, meaning that they are made out of pixels. Photoshop is best for editing pixels.

What program were the old designs created in? Were they created as vector or pixels? Do you still have the other program? You could try saving them as PDF and then opening the PDF in Illustrator. This might work depending on the program, and how the designs were created.

[Theresa J]

This article explains the vector vs raster really well https://vector-conversions.com/vectorizing/raster_vs_vector.html

[angie_taylor · Accepted solution]

If you want to convert your artwork to vectors so that you can change colors and resolution, you could try the Image Trace feature. It’s not perfect but may get you good enough results to begin with.

first, open your image in Illustrator.

‘Select it and apply Image Trace

Open the Image Trace panel (window menu)

change the settings to use as many colours as your design needs

adjust any other settings, including “ignore white” to remove your white background

once it looks ok, then Expand the Artwork so that you can then select the vectors for recolouring

to Select individual shapes you will need to go into Isolation Mode.

if you need further instruction on how to do any of these things there are lots of tutorials on the Adobe Illustrator page on the Adobe website where you can get more detailed instructions.

[jane-e]

joslynb17646162  wrote

Does it matter if the original was a jpg or png file? I don't want a white background on the design because they will go on a mockup t-shirt in Photoshop. Can someone point out what I doing wrong here?

What was the program you used to create them in originally, and how hard would it be to redraw the artwork in Illustrator? ImageTrace works sometimes, and you can try it, but if it fails, you may want to put your image on a template layer (locked, faded, non-printing) and redraw on top of it for best results.

JPEGs do not hold transparency, and they will have that white background. Both JPEG and PNG are raster formats.

[angie_taylor]

When you use Image Trace you can choose the “Ignore White“ option to make white areas transparent. Or, you can go into isolation mode after expanding the artwork so that you can select the background object and delete it.

[joslynb17646162]

Ok thank you all for your suggestions. I can't remember the name of the drawing program but I do still have access to it. I can change the documents to pdf files. If that doesn't work I will try the image trace option.