How to erase on a "placed" image in Illustrator

[plclark5]

Whenever I "place" an image into illustrator it wont let me erase on the actual image. Any ideas on how I can make this happen?

[Monika Gause]

What kind of image? a pixel image?

You can't erase pixels in Illustrator. Do that in Photoshop or use masks instead.

[plclark5]

JPEG...yeah I am fairly new to Illustrator...I am in to typography and so I like to draw a rough sketch of my drawings on paper then scan them into my computer where I then clean them up. Do you have any suggestions on how I can upload an image and be able to erase and manipulate the image itself? Or is that not possible?

Thanks!

[Monika Gause]

Do you have any suggestions on how I can upload an image and be able to erase and manipulate the image itself?

use a raster image editing software like Photoshop or GIMP

[Steve Fairbairn]

Place your sketch onto a template layer. Then trace it with the Pen tool. Once you get the hang of the pen you will find that it’s a very versatile tool and tracing won’t take long. Outline some real type to see how anchors are best positioned.

[plclark5]

This worked perfectly, thank you!

[divbzfBSHVDJDShjvbfWHLJV]

It is absolutely ridiculous that you can't trace select a portion of a placed item to get rid of the background in Illustrator. Especially when it just automatically flushes the transparent aspect of the image to bring pure white.

There is no [curse word removed by moderator] reason I shouldn't be able to selectively crop out a portion of a placed image.

[jane-e]

divbzfBSHVDJDShjvbfWHLJV  wrote

There is no  reason I shouldn't be able to selectively crop out a portion of a placed image.

You can crop in Illustrator. Select your image and choose Crop Image from the Control panel.

[Doug A Roberts]

or you could draw a clipping mask.

[JETalmage]

It is absolutely ridiculous that you can't trace select a portion of a placed item to get rid of the background...when it just automatically flushes the transparent aspect of the image to bring pure white.

It is not "absolutely ridiculous" that you can't actually edit raster images in a vector drawing program. That's more a "philosophical" aspect of the program's design intent. As far back as programs like Silicon Graphics SuperPaint and Deneba Canvas (which is still alive and kicking), some vector drawing programs are designed to provide at least some level of that kind of "hybrid" functionality; while other programs are more vector "purist" in their design intent (which I actually prefer, but it does not necessarily translate to "full featured" or to "better").

Affinity Designer is another current program which provides some raster editing capability in its otherwise primarily vector-based environment, and it only costs $50. So if it's a big deal to you to be able to some level of raster image editing in a vector drawing program, that alone is a perfectly valid reason to add it to your tool set. And you'll gain other functionality not provided in Illustrator, too.

Selecting an arbitrarily shaped set of pixels in a raster image in order to "cut away" the "background" is not "flushing the transparent aspect" (whatever that means). It's creating a clipping mask, which you can do in Illustrator. And Illustrator also provides for raster masks.

But there is no actual "background" in a flattened raster image; it's just colored pixels like what you think of as the "foreground". So even in vector-based programs which provide a "tool" for doing that, a raster image is still--by definition--a rectangular array of pixels, regardless of whether some of those pixels are colored white or whether the image has an alpha channel used for transparency.

There is no [curse word removed by moderator] reason I shouldn't be able to selectively crop out a portion of a placed image.

I do agree that being able to simply and actually crop (as opposed to merely masking) an embedded raster image to a rectangular portion of it should be standard fare in a vector drawing program. And it pretty much is. People have been complaining about this omission in Illustrator (among other things, like sensible path cutting) literally for decades.

But as was pointed out, simply cropping an image has just recently been added to Illustrator. That, of course, doesn't do you any good if you (like me) are not using the rental-only license version of Illustrator. And I'm not going to start renting software for decades-late features (or, frankly, for any other reason).

So you should always state what version of Illustrator you are using.

JET