How to turn just the background white?

[Dylan23827101y1gy]

I got an image that I'm trying to grayscale/black and white, and I want to give it more contrast so I have a black background, but the image trace made the original transparent background white. I also can't do ignore white because the image I want to keep has a lot of white in it. Do I have to go into photoshop and manually snip out the image?

[Larry G. Schneider]

Have you tried using Object>Expand Appearance (or Expand) and then use the Direct Select tool to select the white background and change the color to black?

[Dylan23827101y1gy]

I'll try that