Turn a solid image into just an outline?

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
March 19, 2014
2 replies
108753 views

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

How to

Monika Gause

Community Expert

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?

M

Melbatoast68Author

Participating Frequently

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

Steve Fairbairn

Inspiring

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.

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.

Larry G. Schneider

Community Expert

Look at Object>Image Trace.

M

Melbatoast68Author

Participating Frequently

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

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