Turn a solid image into just an outline?

[Melbatoast68]

Hello, I have a simple question that is driving me crazy. I have a guitar pick jpeg that is a black pen line filled with white I am using for a design. I placed the pick image into Ai and now can't figure out how to change it. I just want to select the image, and transform it into just an outline of the pick, all transparent everywhere except the outline shape of the pick. Almost the same as if I had drawn the pick with the pen tool, but I don't want to have to draw it. My skills in that are beginner and not very good to say the least.

Thanks

[Larry G. Schneider]

Look at Object>Image Trace.

[Melbatoast68]

I just do that and all of a sudden it will be an outlined image with no fill and be transparent everywhere except the line of the pick??? Because I think I already saw that option somewhere and tried it and all it did was make the image lines on the pick get smoother, but didn't make the white fill in the middle go away and transparent. If that IS the way to do this, can you please give more detailed instructions as I am a beginner to Ai.

Thank you so much

[Monika Gause]

Melbatoast68 wrote:

but I don't want to have to draw it.

A guitar pick is a fine lesson for a start. You'll have to learn the pen tool anyway. Why don't you start now?

[Melbatoast68]

I've actually decided to do a state instead of a guitar pick, so it's not possible to use the pen tool. Pus, like I said, I just want illustrator to do it for me. I don't have time to learn it right now. I just want to illustrator to outline the image and make the rest of the image transparent. Is that possible or not? I've seen it done with text, where you can just press a few buttons and then the text is no longer solid, but just the outline of the words. Is there a way to do that with an image? Drawing the image is not an option.

Thanks

[Kurt Gold]

Can you show or provide your image in question?

[Melbatoast68]

www.heavymetalpicks.com/images/custompick_01.jpg is just an example. It doesn't really matter what image it is, I just want to be able to place an image in illustrator and then have illustrator turn it from a solid image into just an outline of the image and be transparent everywhere except the outline of the image. Is that possible?

Thank you

[Jacob Bugge]

Melbatoast,

The Image Trace with the right settings (Ignore White and set it to Stroke and not Fill) should do it.

[Steve Fairbairn]

Or just do and ordinary trace with Ignore White, expand and hit Shift+X to convert fills to strokes.

Here’s an image of some trees that I did that way. It was a very ordinary photo until I replaced fills with strokes.

[Melbatoast68]

The image trace thing eventually worked, but I have NO idea what the answers with ignore white and set to stroke not fill mean or where they are in the tools. I did not see that ANYWHERE. I just used the image trace, but then had to fumble my way through all the options until it finally did what I wanted and made it into an outline with anchor points all over the pick or the state. So thank you for all your help even though I ended up finding it on my own and it was not like how people described. But none the less, you put me on to the right path and I got it done and can finish this logo for my friend now. It will be really nice now and help my friend out a ton. So thanks everyone.

[Steve Fairbairn]

Ignore White is one of the options in Image Trace. There’s a checkbox for it. Under normal circumstances it will produce transparent areas instead of white ones.

Once you have got a reasonably good trace you must expand it to produce editable paths. In this case you will have black filled paths on a transparent background.

Having got this far, all you need to do is select everything and hit Shift+X. This will give you black stroked paths on a transparent background. Then adjust stroke weights and attributes as required.

[Jacob Bugge]

I will try to remember the nice and easy Shift+X, Steve.

[sheridantanner36600]

TLDR all previous comments, and I realize your problem has long been figured out and abandoned, but in the future... if you have the imported image selected in Adobe Illustrator (I'm using CC 2017, I'm not sure if this is true across all versions), then navigate to the "Object" menu drop-down at the top, hover over "Image Trace," and select "Make and Expand." On the surface, this looks like the white background is still glued to the traced image, but actually they're separate and just grouped together. With the image selected now, if you hit Ctrl+Shift+G, that should ungroup the separate pieces and you can manipulate or delete the white bit to your heart's content.

Alternatively, you can double click on the white part of the image while the image is still grouped and this allows you to edit the individual pieces while operating *within* the group. When you're finished making your changes, just double click anywhere outside of the grouped pieces and you'll exit that state/level, letting you treat the individual pieces as a group again.