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I have seen this question posted a bunch of times yet none of them are answered correctly it seems. When I try and paste or place a png with a transparent background into Illustrator CS6 (Windows 8.1 64) it does not recognize the transparency. The silly workaround that I have found is dragging/pasting into Powerpoint first and then cutting and pasting into Illustrator, et voila, transparent background is preserved. What is going on? How can I fix this super annoying problem? Thanks in advance.
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I have seen this question posted a bunch of times yet none of them are answered correctly it seems. When I try and paste or place a png with a transparent background into Illustrator CS6 (Windows 8.1 64) it does not recognize the transparency. The silly workaround that I have found is dragging/pasting into Powerpoint first and then cutting and pasting into Illustrator, et voila, transparent background is preserved. What is going on? How can I fix this super annoying problem? Thanks in advance.
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The silly workaround that I have found is dragging/pasting into Powerpoint first and then cutting and pasting into Illustrator
Does that Really really work ! it does not make any sense to me .
Illustrator is a " vector" based application and Png is a Pixel file format,
To Maintain Transparency you can either: open or place the png file.
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Yes, the Powerpoint copy/past does work. I wish I knew why.
No, using place does not work.
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@spaceguy_spiff, TY for sharing the PowerPoint trick. The "Place" function requires that you keep the original file where it was at the time of placing it.
How did you learn the trick? I hope Adobe works on this...
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If you are using the outdated CS6, then no, Adobe is not working on that one anymore.
As for that PowerPoint "trick": PNG comes in a multitude of flavors, it has a gazillion of options and stuff and no, Illustrator doesn't understand all of those.
Placing a file doesn't necessarily require you to keep the placed file. It depends if you link or embed the file.
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Illustrator will not recognize the transparency in a png if the png is pasted into Illustrator. Instead of copy/paste, first save the png and then File > Place it into Illustrator. Or if you drag the png to your desktop, then drag it into Illustrator it should keep the transparency.
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On top of wht has already been said there are a couple of options and versions in which PNG can be saved (from numerous applications which might or might not do this correctly).
Illustrator maybe does not understand all of them.
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Simple
Open in photoshop
Use "save for web " and save as "png" and opt for "png -24" .
Make sure that Transparency box is checked, or else turn it on and save.
now drag and drop it into illustrator.
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I had this problem and it tuned out to be the PNG's Color Mode was the cause.
If I opened the PNG in Photoshop its Mode was "Indexed".
Once I changed it to CMYK I was able to export it as a PNG that maintained it's transparency in Illustrator.
I hope that helps!
- Thomas
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I was having this problem also... going crazy because I knew this worked fine in other contexts. As @thomash96551741 said, the problem for me was also that this particular PNG was saved in Indexed mode instead of RGB mode. I just opened it in Photoshop, changed the mode to RGB, saved, and then dragged and dropped it into Illustrator and all was as expected again. I think others have commented that Illustrator might have trouble with certain format options.