How To Remove White Background On Illustrator

Trying to work with an image that doesn't have a transparent background can be a hurting, especially if it has a white background and yous need to overlay information technology onto a backdrop that isn't white. In this tutorial I'll be demonstrating how y'all can remove a white background with Adobe Illustrator. This method can too piece of work with whatsoever other blazon of groundwork, whether it be a solid fill, a design, or something photographic.

Removing the groundwork from an image is something that would be amend suited for a photograph manipulating plan, like Photoshop or GIMP, only information technology about certainly can be done with Illustrator if that's your tool of choice. The fashion that we'll be doing this is by creating a silhouette-similar tracing of your image's subject, then using it to create a clipping mask.

Remove A White Groundwork with Adobe Illustrator

To remove a white background with Adobe Illustrator, utilize the Pen Tool to manually draw a shape around the subject of your prototype, then use that shape as a clipping mask for the image.

The post-obit is a brief overview of the steps nosotros'll be taking to remove the background from your photos with Illustrator. For complete stride-by-step instructions, please lookout the video tutorial below. There'southward only so much that I can convey through written text.

Stride 1: Create a silhouette-similar tracing over your subject.
Step 2: Utilise your tracing as a clipping mask for the image.
Stride three: Create a new artboard for your image and consign it as a PNG file.

Permit's become started!

Step i: Create A Tracing

For this tutorial I'll exist using the following example prototype. As depicted, the goal is to remove the white background around the discipline of the paradigm and replace information technology with transparency (represented by the checkerboard pattern.)

Image with the background removed

The first thing we have to do is manually create a silhouette-like object in the shape of the subject of your image. I placed a green tracing over my bailiwick below to illustrate what I mean.

Green overlay over the subject

The dark-green object will be used as a clipping mask and everything outside of it (the white background) will get transparent.

To create this object I used the Pen Tool and drew it manually.

Manual drawing with the Pen Tool

If you lot're not familiar with the Pen Tool yet, make certain to check out a tutorial I recently made on how to use the Pen Tool.

Finished tracing

Step 2: Create A Clipping Mask

In social club to remove a white groundwork with Adobe Illustrator, we're technically not going to remove the groundwork; we're simply going to extract the discipline from the photo by making a clipping mask.

A clipping mask sort of works the same way a cookie cutter works. Call back of your object equally the cookie cutter and your image is the dough. You tin can utilize your object to catch only the portion of the image that the object occupies.

An added benefit of using this arroyo is that it'south not permanent. It can exist undone at any point in the future if you lot so desire.

To make your clipping mask, select both your object and the epitome and navigate to Object > Clipping Mask > Make.

Menu pathway for making a clipping mask

This will finer remove the white background from your image. You can even move the image off of the artboard to see the grayness background of Illustrator showing through.

How the image looks with the clipping mask applied

Y'all tin undo this at whatever point past navigating to Object > Clipping Mask > Release.

Step three: Exporting Your Piece of work

At present that you lot've cropped the subject field of your epitome from your groundwork, it'southward time to export your finished work.

Grab the Artboard Tool (keyboard shortcut: shift + o) then click on your image twice to create a new artboard around it, but make sure to move your paradigm off of the original artboard and into the grayness expanse first. And so yous can delete the original artboard.

If you're unsure about how to do this and then check out the tutorial I made nearly sizing your artwork to the artboard with Illustrator.

After you have removed the white background from your prototype and placed a new artboard around it, it's time to export your work. Navigate to File > Export > Export for Screens to bring up the Consign menu.

The Export For Screens menu

You can choose the file name past changing the proper noun of the artboard in the top-left portion of the menu. You can choose the folder location to export it to by clicking the folder icon in the upper-right portion of the menu. Finally, nether the Formats department, click Add together Scale and cull the following settings…

Calibration	Suffix	Format
1x	None	PNG

It'southward important that you lot choose PNG over whatsoever other format because PNG allows for transparency layers, whereas JPG does not. If you export your image as a JPG file then it'south going to make the groundwork white by default, which defeats the entire purpose of this tutorial.

In one case you have your settings in place, delete any other scales that may be listed by clicking the X icon to the right of them.

Now click Export Artboard to export your paradigm and navigate to the file location on your hard drive to confirm that the white background has indeed been removed and replaced with transparency.

If at any betoken yous want to go back and make changes to your piece of work, you tin save your document separately equally an AI file. This is Illustrator's native format that volition allow you to pick upwardly where you left off later.

Conclusion

That should exercise it for today's tutorial on how to remove a white background with Adobe Illustrator. Similar I previously mentioned, Illustrator isn't the all-time tool for this sort of task, only it can certainly get the chore washed. If you'd like to utilise an application more suitable for removing backgrounds from images and so bank check out GIMP — a gratis and open source photo manipulation software like to Photoshop. I have a tutorial on removing background with GIMP hither.

If any role of this tutorial was unclear simply leave a annotate below and I'll run into what I can do to aid. Equally always, thanks for watching!

Become A Master of Adobe Illustrator!

Desire to larn more well-nigh how Adobe Illustrator works? Check out my Illustrator Explainer Series - a comprehensive drove of over 100 videos where I become over every tool, feature and function and explain what information technology is, how it works, and why it's useful.

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