importing png with transparent background into illustrator CS6

[spaceguy_spiff]

I have seen this question posted a bunch of times yet none of them are answered correctly it seems. When I try and paste or place a png with a transparent background into Illustrator CS6 (Windows 8.1 64) it does not recognize the transparency. The silly workaround that I have found is dragging/pasting into Powerpoint first and then cutting and pasting into Illustrator, et voila, transparent background is preserved. What is going on? How can I fix this super annoying problem? Thanks in advance.

[Mohammad.Harb]

The silly workaround that I have found is dragging/pasting into Powerpoint first and then cutting and pasting into Illustrator

Does that Really really work !  it does not make any sense to me .

Illustrator is a " vector" based application and Png is a Pixel file format,

To Maintain Transparency you can either: open or place the png file.

[spaceguy_spiff]

Yes, the Powerpoint copy/past does work. I wish I knew why.

No, using place does not work.

[zecahuguenin]

@spaceguy_spiff, TY for sharing the PowerPoint trick. The "Place" function requires that you keep the original file where it was at the time of placing it.

How did you learn the trick? I hope Adobe works on this...

[Monika Gause]

If you are using the outdated CS6, then no, Adobe is not working on that one anymore.

As for that PowerPoint "trick": PNG comes in a multitude of flavors, it has a gazillion of options and stuff and no, Illustrator doesn't understand all of those.

Placing a file doesn't necessarily require you to keep the placed file. It depends if you link or embed the file.

[Mario36539645b6eh]

Is crazy, that solution actually works, whomever come up with thar - thanks ! 

[barbara_a · Accepted solution]

Illustrator will not recognize the transparency in a png if the png is pasted into Illustrator. Instead of copy/paste, first save the png and then File > Place it into Illustrator. Or if you drag the png to your desktop, then drag it into Illustrator it should keep the transparency.

[Hobbes0022]

Are you sure this is it? I just did some tests. My PNG got a black background when importing via drag and drop and also via  File->Place. What made the black background go away is saving the PNG differently:

- if I allowed Paint.NET to automatically determine the bit depth, the background would be black in Illustrator

- if I set the bit depth to 32 bit, the background was correct (transparent) in Illustrator.

[Claudia5F9E]

This works for me: Open PNG in Photoshop. Save as .psd. Open in Illustrator and check "make layers from objects". Voila.

[Idz5E56]

I can confirm that what Claudia said is correct. It looks like it has the white background but when you choose Select > Show Transparency Grid the background does disappear. 

[Himanshu31893054vs7j]

thanks you save my lot of time , now i dont copy and paste in illustrator but i just drag into thanks ,

[Monika Gause]

On top of wht has already been said there are a couple of options and versions in which PNG can be saved (from numerous applications which might or might not do this correctly).

Illustrator maybe does not understand all of them.

[suryaheatz]

Simple

Open in photoshop

Use "save for web " and save as "png" and opt for "png -24" .

Make sure that Transparency box is checked, or else turn it on and save.

now drag and drop it into illustrator.

[thomash96551741]

I had this problem and it tuned out to be the PNG's Color Mode was the cause.

If I opened the PNG in Photoshop its Mode was "Indexed".

Once I changed it to CMYK I was able to export it as a PNG that maintained it's transparency in Illustrator.

I hope that helps!

- Thomas

[raycardillo]

I was having this problem also... going crazy because I knew this worked fine in other contexts. As @thomash96551741 said, the problem for me was also that this particular PNG was saved in Indexed mode instead of RGB mode. I just opened it in Photoshop, changed the mode to RGB, saved, and then dragged and dropped it into Illustrator and all was as expected again. I think others have commented that Illustrator might have trouble with certain format options.

[CPN9698]

I believe that the aplha channel containing the transparency information gets removed somehow when copy pasting directly. Might be an issue with reading from the clipboard. (Illustrator does some funny stuff for example directly copy pasting text from Word has issues, but pasting within a textbox works perfectly).

There are numerous workarounds though. Place image / Copying from powerpoint etc.

[Rifter2076]

Here to say that the problem still exists in 2021 lol. The copy/paste from PowerPoint worked. I haven't bothered trying "save as" from Photoshop because I am not worried about transparency. 

Thanks for the tip! Still works five years later! 😉

[thatcommsguy]

+1

I can say exactly the same thing. Same problem, can't work out why Illustrator doesn't seem to recognise the transparency, but found that the copy/paste via PowerPoint does the trick. Very strange.

So, yes, thanks to @spaceguy_spiff for the tip!

[Stengel99]

THANK YOU! (Yes, I'm shouting!) I'm 100% with you, that nothing else seemed to work, but your solution did work! Only difference for me is that I used Google Slides instead of PowerPoint.

[Facundo26151728v9tx]

That's because the PNG format has multiple "types" in the metadata I checked that the "paletteAlpha" type doesn't support transparency in Illustrator and appears with a black background, while "TrueColorAlpha" is working properly.

The way I have found to solve it is to change this format with the program Imagemagick

In my case the code that worked was the following:

magick convert input.png -type TrueColorAlpha -define png:include-chunk=none output.png

P.d.: PowerPoint makes the image work because when it copies it, it copies it in the format that PowerPoint provides, which happens to be a working format for Illustrator.

[Facundo26151728v9tx]

By the way, note that with Imagemagick you can batch-format images, which is astronomically more efficient than the Powerpoint trick.

[bojana38855097yh37]

Basically all you have to do in Photoshop is sellect part that you wish to import, cut and paste it it in into a new layer, and also save that selection (Select menu -> Save selection). Than you simply make background layer invisible and save as .png. That should import without any background, ie just a sellection you wish to keep..