Filling a complex vector with white

Question

Hello Adobe Community! I just finished a rather complex black and white vector, shown here. None of the white space is actually filled in with white, because I wanted a transparent version of it, so far so good!

However, I'd also like to make a version of it where the background remains transparent, but the shape itself is filled in with white. Is there some straightforward way to make this happen in Illustrator? Or would I be better off just doing it in Photoshop, which would be a cinch, but perhaps less clean? The only way I can think of to do this in Illustrator is laboriously selecting the areas that are to be filled in white, excluding the areas that are filled black, and filling in that way. Is there a strategy I'm missing? Thanks!

sharp_hands16B8 · Accepted Answer

So if you don't have any gaps in your line work you could just draw a solid colored box behind your dragonfly and knock that out with a live paint click.

Another option would be to use the Shape Merge tool. Double click on the tool and you can see an option to close gaps, and what size setting you would like it to close as it detects them. If you convert all your outlines to objects first, then grab the shape merge, set it to Large gaps as an option, then hold CMD on mac, CTRL on windows, you can draw a frame around the whole dragonfly and let it merge all the gaps and fill itself in.

But this all depends on how you drew the lines and objects.

Kurt Gold · Answer

Can you share the dragonfly as an .ai file?It all depends on how it is constructed.

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