Image Trace ignores transparency

[faszember]

Salute,

I ran into a problem where I save a simple black drawing done w a brush tool in Photoshop 19.1.3 with a transparent background, saved into a PSD. When I open it in Illustrator (23.0), or Place it into Illustrator and do Image Trace (with whatever settings, including Ignore White) the image gets "traced" on the outside of the square containing the drawing. Same thing happens when I save it from Photoshop as a PNG, although the transparency is there.

What am I doing wrong this time?

Best,

faszember

[Monika Gause]

Please show.

[faszember]

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

In "Method" you need to check the left button.

On top of that, you need to click on "Expand" afterwards in order to get the actual paths.

Please read the documentation: So bearbeiten Sie mit dem Bildnachzeichner Bildmaterial in Illustrator

[faszember]

Vielen Dank!

[Black Platypus]

What the...

Since Illustrator's tracer doesn't have an "ignore transparency" mode, I'd like to try the right option, "Overlapping (Creates stacked paths)", since ignoring or even manually deleting white sections simply isn't an option if the source contains white sections that overlap with transparent sections.

In my mind ,there's still a chance Illustrator might keep "background transparency white" and "pixel value white" separate and I was looking forward to seeing if I could then simply delete an underlaying white rectangle, thus keeping my other, actual white shapes.

I'm already tee'd off by Illustrator not providing some of the most basic functions like ignoring transparency, but if you're telling me that the right option, "Overlapping shapes", is actually not an option, I quit.

[Monika Gause]

What the...

Since Illustrator's tracer doesn't have an "ignore transparency" mode, I'd like to try the right option, "Overlapping (Creates stacked paths)", since ignoring or even manually deleting white sections simply isn't an option if the source contains white sections that overlap with transparent sections.

In my mind ,there's still a chance Illustrator might keep "background transparency white" and "pixel value white" separate and I was looking forward to seeing if I could then simply delete an underlaying white rectangle, thus keeping my other, actual white shapes.

I'm already tee'd off by Illustrator not providing some of the most basic functions like ignoring transparency, but if you're telling me that the right option, "Overlapping shapes", is actually not an option, I quit.

By @Black Platypus

The forum is 95% not staff. We are volunteers.

I don't understand what you want to do. Please show an example that you would like to trace, so we can try and help you achieve that.

If you want to post a feature request, do so over there:  http://illustrator.uservoice.com

[Black Platypus]

Oh I hope you're a bot and not an actual person I've made write a "reign it in" post 😬

I'm simply describing my feelings as well as my situation, I didn't mean to sound like I was expecting any people present to solve the issues AI may have o_o

I think I know now what happened; I didn't notice two things. I'll share my embarassing process for other people ending up here.

TL;DR:

• Looks like you don't need to click "Trace" when preview is on
• Remember to expand the trace so you can work with the paths.

Here is what happened, I think:

The source I wanted to trace was a Photoshop document with all rasterized layers (painted, with the occasional layer mask (not clipping mask). Transparent background; there were white areas overlapping with it. [attachment 1]

I then tried tracing it, but was unable to separate the "background white" AI created from any "actual", pixel-value white areas. Of course, AI would also remove the actual white areas I wanted to keep. [attachment 2]

So I thought "let's try using the "Overlapping (Creates stacked paths)" method. Maybe AI will keep the background a separate rectangle that I can then later remove easily"

However, I discovered then that the "Trace" button was not enabled; grayed out.

An internet search lead me to somebody saying you should rasterize the object, which I did. The source was, as I understand it, already rasterized, but I tried this, to ensure AI saw the object as a bitmap, ready to go. This was not met with success.

Further googling lead me here, where I read that

you need to check the left button

By @Monika Gause

, which sounded like the right button (method) would keep you from tracing anything.

Should that be true, that would be truly weird and bad design. I voiced my opinion along with my then prevailing issue: Apologies if anyone felt like I was being harsh on the community, that was absolutely not itended!

However, between my attempts, it seems like I always either

• overlooked that the "preview" checkbox seems to supersede/obviate the "Trace" button
• or possibly forgot to expand the trace

, resulting in me being unable to proceed with my attempt.

I haven't worked with AI in a while, which is likely to make any of the two mistakes above more likely -_-

End result:

Simply doing Object -> Expand will work with the state the preview already currently displayed.

While preview is on, the Trace button may be greyed out, because preview actually does do the tracing already.

In my case (White objects intersecting with transparent background), the "Overlapping" mode did not help so far. I had to go back and add a distinct background color to my source, which I could then delete (isolate down to single shape, then Select -> Same -> Fill Color; delete).

In my case, this worked because there was no appreciable transparency in my foreground, but it looks like the same method would require a re-coloring of any previously partly transparent areas.

If somebody knows a way to exclude transparency in image tracing after all, let us know!

Otherwise:
Apologies and good luck!