help! re: ungrouping greyed out image

[andrewm90093423]

Hi,

I have opened pngs into illustrator with the purpose of recolouring them.

I have done this a million times before, selecting the different parts to recolour.  For some reason now I cannot do this.  I am convinced I accidently have some sort of setting on.  Can someone advise?

Normally I would use the direct selection tool to do this, making sure the object is ungrouped.  Now the ungrouped option is greyed out.

Any ideas anyone?

[jane-e]

If it is a PNG, it is an image, and you need to do Image Trace, then Expand to make it vector. Then it will be a group and you will be able to recolor it in Illustrator.

[andrewm90093423]

image trace not working too well.  I'' try using another file format in the first place  thanks

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

Can you share screenshot including with your layers?

[Bill Silbert · Accepted solution]

There is no way you could have recolored parts of a png in Illustrator since a png is a raster file and you need a vector file in order to recolor in Illustrator. Jane's suggestion to use Image Trace will make it vector but please be aware that the quality of the trace may not be even close to what your original image looked like.

By the way is it possible that what you've actually recolored in the past were "Smart Objects" that were within a PSD file? If that was the case then those actually were Illustrator vector files that have taken up residence within the PSD. When you make changes to a Smart Object (which you can do by double-clicking on the smart object icon on its layer within the PSD) you are actually brought back to Illustrator to make changes which after you Save and return to the PSD automatically update within the PSD.

[andrewm90093423]

thanks, I'm guessing what I used before were not pngs

[Junyyy]

I have a a similar issue where my files are also PNG files. I used Image Trace and then clicked on High Fidelity Photo. However, when I try to use the Ungroup function, the button is greyed out. I've been trying to figure out a way to solve this issue but to no avail. I feel as if it a very simple fix and I just do not knnow what to do. If anyone could help it would be highly appreciated. I included screenshots if you need a visual. If you need any other screenshots please feel free to ask.  

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

After tracing expand the trace. The button should be in the control panel: Window > Control