importing png with transparent background into illustrator CS6

[#1]

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.

[#2]

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.

[#3]

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.

[#4]

Yes, the Powerpoint copy/past does work. I wish I knew why.

No, using place does not work.

[#5]

@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...

[#6]

If you are using the outdated CS6, then no, Adobe is not working on that one anymore.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.

[#7]

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.

[#8]

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.

[#9]

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.

[#10]

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

[#11]

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.