Lasso Tool will not select in Illustrator CS5

[Marial2]

I'm extremely frustrated beginner. I am making color charts for my Etsy store and need to cut out spools of thread colors from a bunch of jpegs I saved and arrange them onto a new screen in a row and label the colors. I usually just make colored circles or squares and then label them but I thought I would cut out the jpg's from the thread supplier and just use THE ACTUAL PHOTOS instead of making boring colored circles. But when I lasso just  the spool of thread, without the big white background, the selection line goes away ( i don't get the ants!) and the line is then going around the whole photo instead. The youtube vids all say to just lasso it and then grab it with the pointer and drag it to where you want it. It's not working! Already spent hours on trying to fix why it is not working,.  

How do I get my lasso tool to work? I want to cut out the spool of thread and then move it onto my big white board. Is this possible? 

[tromboniator]

Illustrator is not really designed for dealing with pixel-based images, such as jpg. You would be better off in Photoshop. If you are limited to Illustrator you could try using the Pen Tool to create the shape of the spool and apply it as a Clipping Mask, then Flatten Transparency to get you closer to the isolated image you want.

The Lasso tool in Illustrator will absolutely not work for this task. Are you sure the tutorials are about Illustrator? and jpg? I have doubts.

Peter

[Marial2]

Sent from my iPad

[Marial2]

I guess my reply didn't take. I'll try again here. 

i found 3 tutorials on YouTube. Here is an example of one I watched. 

[tromboniator]

Okay, The one you've circled is not about the Lasso Tool, it's the Pen Tool. The one above it is about the Lasso Tool, but it's being used on vector (Illustrator) artwork, not a raster (pixel) image. The one under it is about Photoshop, which works quite differently.

Peter

[Marial2]

Ok you're right. I looked again and I tried that tutorial after I failed with the lasso tool to cute the spool out. I tried pen clicking around and it started covering up,the photo as I turned the corner. More over, with each pen click it covered each angle in white. I had to stop it. So the pen tool didn't work either. 

[Doug A Roberts]

The pen tool had a white fill applied. I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve with it, but that's why it would be covering up the image.

[Marial2]

I was following the tutorial above that is circled. I am trying to cut the spool of thread out shown above and arrange many of them in a row, labels by color.  I'm trying to make a color chart for my Etsy store product listing. 

[Doug A Roberts]

You should do this in Photoshop. Use the recolour tools there to make the different versions of the spool.

[jane-e]

Hi

• Dragging with the Lasso tool in Photoshop will select pixels.
• Dragging with the Lasso tool in Illustrator will select anchor points.

You can place images into Illustrator and you can crop them, but you cannot edit image pixels in Illustrator. To edit an image in the way you are trying to do, you need an image editor, such as Photoshop. Photoshop has a new Object Selection tool that will work really well on the image you are showing, btw.

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/methods-for-selecting-artwork.html

~ Jane

[Marial2]

I have the whole suite CS5.  I was just trying to avoid going back and forth between PS and illustrator.  In PS I can cut the spool out and then save it. But do I save it as PS file or jpeg? Then in illustrator open them one by one and arrange them and label them. Do you suggest that? 

[Doug A Roberts]

There doesn't seem to a be a reason to use Illustrator at all for this.

[jane-e]

You are trying to put the spools of thread on the Etsy website, is that correct? Use Photoshop, not Illustrator. Don't save it as a jpeg, as jpegs do not support transparency and will fill in the transparent areas with white (or whatever your background color currently is.) PSD is a good format to keep for yourself, as it supports layers that you might use in your project.

The web supports three formats:

• JPEG 
• GIF
• PNG

I would save a version in PSD for myself and a second in PNG for the Etsy site. If you need another format or size, you can resave from the PSD. Ask in the PS forum about using a mask instead of deleting the area you don't want (it's non-destructive).

~ Jane

[ur78]

this is a really helpful workaround though! I'm being challenged (limited) to illustrator right now for an assignment and made me realize tf was going on hahaha