Replace background checkerboard transparency by solid color.

[Edu Couchez]

I can't believe I'm the only one I've been struggling with this for decades... How can I get rid of transparency checkerboard? Back in the 90's, Corel Draw had it as default, you could decide the color of the "page", so you could see how it would see over not white backgrounds (screen printing and plotter for example).

I need to eliminate that obnoxious checkerboard in the background to work with transparency. I've been trying for weeks to edit a handful of complex white logos, which I obviously want to be able to see on a "NON-WHITE" background as is the default color of the Artboards. Checkerboards destroy my retina and prevent me from following the contours of the elements.

And no... it doesn't help me to create a giant dark-colored box that covers all the Artboards. It is tedious to lock/unlock, activate and deactivate each time I export the assets to avoid the background appearing by mistake. In Photoshop you can edit the individual color of each square, or even turn it off.

Would it be so difficult to create a basic button to deactivate checkerboard and/or choose the background color?

[Monika Gause]

View > Hide transparency grid does not do it?

Did you download a vector clipart file?

[Edu Couchez]

No :-). The problem is that this is a simple transparency "Settings" that is hidden in "File > Document Settings". Common sense always had me look in "Illustrator > Settings..." or at least in the same place it should be next to "Transparency Grid".

As said, it's in "Document Settings"... not the most intuitive place, as there are many similarly named "settings" menu options spread out within the menus.

[Monika Gause]

There is no background color in Illustrator.

The transparency settings will only look like one, not behave like one. 

[Doug A Roberts · Accepted solution]

You can edit the transparency grid colours (or make them the same colour) in File > Document Setup.

[Edu Couchez]

Hey! Thanks for your quick response... I've actually been trying to solve this problem for years... but always within "View" or "Settings" since I assumed it was a UI configuration setting. Searching Google and YouTube I only found answers on how to remove checkerboard backgrounds from images downloaded from the internet.