Image trace doesn't exclude negative spaces

[dbr 200]

Struggling with image trace. Starting with a black and white photo of branches, very contrasty, I get a good vector image from image trace. I learned to exclude the white and I thought that would solve my problem but it doesn't. After the initial expand is done, I see the white spaces. But what I need is a stroked vector image for laser cutting so I get rid of the fill and make the stroke black. Problem is that when I now want to go back and see what it looks like with a fill, the whole thing fills in. No negative space. Similarly if I copy and paste into photoshop to make paths on an image, then convert the paths to a selection, it only selects the outside. What am I missing here? It's frustrating, because I want to be able to see how this looks before cutting it. Thanks in advance.

[Monika Gause]

Please show.

[dbr 200]

When I select all it looks like this

Then when I fill with black it looks like this

I discovered I could change that by doing subtract front in the paths pallette. But I still can't isolate parts. I wanted to make the outline red so it could be set to cut last, and chose it separately, but it made all the lines red. Then a really weird thing happened where the strokes duplicated themselves so I had two images one on top of the other. One was red stroke and one was black stroke. So the laser cutter started to cut the piece twice till I noticed it and stopped it.

[Monika Gause]

WHen you exclude white, it wil create a compound path.

When you release the compound path, everything gets filled with black.

When you punch it using the pathfinder, you will again create a compound path.

Don't know how you duplicated it. You will need to watch your steps more closely and then also take the layers panel on every step and watch what happens.

[dbr 200]

I did it first without excluding white and then with . Same result. Sorry I’m not a whiz with illustrator, these are all separate paths and I want them to be separate. I ungrouped them. What does it mean to be a compound path?

Sent while mobile

[meganchi]

Make sure nothing is selected. Now, take your direct selection tool (white arrow) and click anywhere on the outer square edge to select it and make sure it isn't selecting your inner shapes. Now click delete key a few times to get rid of it.

You should now be able to select and fill your shapes with a color.

[dbr 200]

To clarify: I am not trying to fill anything. I eventually use this file with stroke only for a laser cutter. I wanted to fill the background and have the shapes be white (in other words, with no fill)  only so I can see how it looks before cutting. I then take away the fill and leave the stroke. And then I wanted to stroke the outside line a different color than the inside ones.

[Monika Gause]

It gets more complicated with every time you write 🙂

Do you want to print and cut it?

Or will be cutting it out of colored foil?

compound paths in the documentation

How to combine objects in Illustrator

[dbr 200]

Again, sorry if I haven't been clear from the beginning. Thanks for your patience and reply.  The thing is, I have no problem with a file like this that has been created from paths exported from photoshop for instance. I discovered the Image trace function was a better way to do what I wanted to do.

A laser cutter uses a vector file to cut shapes from whatever material you want- in my case, either paper or fabric. Because I am cutting the small shapes and then cutting the whole piece from a larger piece of paper, I set the laser cutter to cut the inside bits first, and then the outside. To do that you give them a different color stroke and the laser cutter has a setting for which color goes first.

With the files made from image trace, I'm having these problems. I always check the file by filling the large shape (that is, the one the small ones are cut from) to check what it will look like when the file is cut. Then I get rid of the fill. That's where I run into trouble because the whole thing filled including the small shapes. When I used subtract front the small shapes unfilled. So that was good. But I still have a problem separating the outside line in terms of giving it a different color. There's something about what image trace does that creates a file with different qualities. Thank you for the link. I'll see if this answers my question because maybe it's making a compound path when I don't want one. Can you "uncompound" a path? lol

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

dbr,

As I (mis)understand it, when you are satisfied that the cutouts are right, just select and Object>Compound Path>Release (you can see the shortcut for repeated use), then change the colour(s) as desired.

[dbr 200]

Thank you that worked!

[dbr 200]

I appreciate all your answers- teaching myself Illustrator, there's always a lot to learn and I thank you so much!!

[Jacob Bugge]

For my part you are welcome, dbr.