Participant

Answered

image trace in illustrator greyed out

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
June 21, 2017
8 replies
181815 views

Everything on image trace is greyed out. Preset, View, Mode, Palette, Threshold (and everything in the advanced section too.) I think I hit a button that caused this, but now not sure what to do?

Correct answer Monika Gause

@Scrambledeggs schrieb:

The issue may be the image itself. I tried copying a raster image from Powerpoint and pasting it into Illustrator. All Object > Image trace options were greyed out. If you have a raster image for which you don't have the original source, try pasting it into Photoshop and exporting it. Then placing the exported image into Illustrator. This worked for me and I was able to trace the image.

Images pasted from somewhere can be inside clipping masks. Just release them.

D

dBlueFalconEdits

Participant

The solution for me (because I had the same issue) was to "Flatten Transparency" then the Image Trace window was not greyed out anymore. Hope this helps someone!

S

Scrambledeggs

Participating Frequently

The issue may be the image itself. I tried copying a raster image from Powerpoint and pasting it into Illustrator. All Object > Image trace options were greyed out. If you have a raster image for which you don't have the original source, try pasting it into Photoshop and exporting it. Then placing the exported image into Illustrator. This worked for me and I was able to trace the image.

Monika Gause

Correct answer

Community Expert

@Scrambledeggs schrieb:

The issue may be the image itself. I tried copying a raster image from Powerpoint and pasting it into Illustrator. All Object > Image trace options were greyed out. If you have a raster image for which you don't have the original source, try pasting it into Photoshop and exporting it. Then placing the exported image into Illustrator. This worked for me and I was able to trace the image.

Images pasted from somewhere can be inside clipping masks. Just release them.

B

Brian242056968mdg

Participant

It must be an ai file, not eps.

K

Keaton22551554nahp

Participant

Also the trace option will be greyed-out when in preview mode, so exit preview mode to trace image.

C

CreativeLeaDesign

Participant

Thanks Barbabra Ash. I created a screenshot of the "image" created a new Illustrator document, and that then recognised it as an image! I'm tracing away now 🙂

yichinpeh

Participant

I applied a pixelate filter to a shape and I can't trace it. Is there a better way than screenshotting it?

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Object > Expand Appearance

K

kimmarla

Participant

This just happened to me, too, and I realized the image had a clipping path applied. I released that and trace worked as expected.

M

MylesGelbach

Participant

Having the same issue, this was my problem.

Thank you Saved me some time for sure.

barbara_a7746676

Community Expert

As srisht said, it may be that the image is not selected.

Other things to check:

Is what you are trying to trace actually an image? If it is vector, Image Trace will be grayed out.
Try creating a new Illustrator file. Then choose File > Place. Navigate to the image you want to trace and place it into your Illustrator file. When it is selected, is Image Trace still grayed out?

kenb47

Participant

I took a photo using adobe capture and saved it as a pdf. (and emailed it to another working location).

I then opened it in AI-CC (it looked like a vector but selected like a pixel image).

Image trace was greyed out.

I then 'Placed' the image/vector into a newly created AI-CC doc., and it acted more like a pixel file.

Image Trace was now available.

Thanks

Srishti_Bali

Legend

Hi semibold,

Please make sure if the image is selected, this generally happens when the image is not selected.

Also, Could you please confirm if it is happening with other files as well?

If yes, please reset Illustrator preferences to defaults , for details click here How to set preferences in Illustrator

If it still does not help we would require some more details like

Operating system (Exact version of windows or MAC)

Exact version of Illustrator

Were the files are saved (Both illustrator and place image)

Regards

Srishti

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