HELP!!! How do I remove the white area of my image?

[Falco4077]

Ok, I hate Illustrator and prefer Photoshop. Everything in Photoshop just makes more sense in my brain, but I need a vector conversion of a raster image so I can import it into Cinema 4D. I used the image trace tool to create the vector paths, but while the PNG version that I imported had a transparent background, Illustrator turned into a white plane behind my white shapes, and I can't figure out how to delete it, so that all I'm left with are my vector shapes. I tried separating them by the Release to Sequence Layers and moving them out of the layer. I also tried creating a new layer with a black rectangle and subtracting it. Nothing seems to work! What do I have to do? Every time I import into Cinema 4D, that plane gets imported as well.

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Falco,

You can Expand the Live Trace, then with the Direct Selection Tool select one of the white paths, then in the Select dropdown click Select>Same>Fill Color, then pres Delete.

Or you can start over and use either of the following Image Trace options, see HelpX page below where you use Search to find the terms:

Outline   : Simplifies the image to black outlines.

Transparency: Prevents the transparent background in the image from being traced as white.

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/image-trace.html

[Falco4077]

Ok. Did that, but I still see a while plane behind my shapes.

[Falco4077]

NVM it worked! Thank you SO much!!!

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Falco.

To ease the pain next time, I have added a few Image Trace options in the opriginal answer.