How to delete colors from the Recolor Artwork tool in Adobe Illustrator 2024?

[ryeebread]

I used Image Trace on High Fidelity to get the best resolution of this photo of a tree and I'm currently trying to remove as much white from the background as possible. I noticed with using the Recolor Artwork tool you can grab every color in your workspace and sort the colors from light to dark. I don't want to change the colors and would much rather delete them if this is possible please help me out I've been on the search for weeks now!

Tool Navigation:

[Edit>Edit Colors>Recolor Artwork...>Advanced Options...>Color Reduction Options>Sort: Lightness - light to dark]

Now, before anyone asks yes, I know that there is such thing as Remove Background in Photoshop and there're other desktop software's that do the same but I'm not interested in using those as I see potential with using this method in Illustrator. Id like to expand my knowledge of Illustrator and further understand this tool, thank you!

I'm also familiar with the tool [Select<Same<Fill Color], which allows you to pick one color at a time. However, this method can be slow and isn't efficient in terms of my time. If this is the only way around to my issue I wonder if there's a way I can set a range of colors to [Select<Same<Fill Color] or select multiple colors at a time, If so I'd love to know!

This leads me to my last option I've heard Adobe Illustrator has the ability to hold extensions similar to SketchUp, not sure, if so there may be an extension that I don't know of that may help...

                                                                             Photo Reference

[Monika Gause]

Only thing that could get you closer is the magis wand tool. It can select similar.

But actually I do not think that this kind of workflow will get you very far in the vector world. Why not clean this in Photoshop and then just place it as a photo? Traced photos usually just look horrible.

[Kurt Gold]

Can you share the Illustrator file with the tree for inspection?

[ryeebread]

So far under the Advanced Options for Recolor Artwork I've been changing the new color type to Exact>Selecting one row at a time>Changing HSB scale to [0/0/100]

Also, for some reason it wont let me upload my file?

[Kurt Gold]

Save your file as .pdf with Illustrator Editing Capabilities turned on. Then try to upload it here.

[ryeebread]

Does this work?

https://assets.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:63009790-83d4-430e-89af-168c5b992b9d?view=published

[ryeebread]

Try this Link instead:

https://assets.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:93117c96-71e1-4650-8cac-978d1c2a35d3?view=difile

[Kurt Gold]

No, unfortunately not. This is just a preview without a download link to the actual Illustrator file.

[ryeebread]

Sorry it took awhile, is the PDF working?

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

Thanks for providing the file.

The differences of the "white" objects are not as slight as expected.

In this case I would also take the route that Monika already suggested. Double click the Magic Wand tool to open its options. Set the tolerance for the fill colour to 20 (for example). Then take the Magic Wand tool and click on one of the brighter "white" objects and see if the selection suits your needs. If so, delete the selection. If not, try out some different values for fill colour tolerance.

[ryeebread]

oh wow I feel so dumb thank you so much! Monika if you're reading this thank you aswell!