Working with an unweildly vector in Illustrator?

December 2, 2010 9:43 AM

Illustrator gurus! Is the answer staring me in the face?

I have a complex vector (let's say a car for example) that was created from a jpg via the Tracing Tool.
How can I divide it into seperate elements, or edit a single element? When I adjust any anchor points, it ends up going haywire. I've also tried the pathfinder:divide tool but it says it needs filled paths.

This seems easy but I'm flummoxed.
Thanks!

posted by smelvis to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Choose Ungroup from the Object menu?
posted by nomadicink at 9:48 AM on December 2, 2010

Response by poster: I've tried ungroup, but it's not treating it as a group. If I double click on the image, a single path will highlight, but not a complete shape that can be filled, adjusted, etc.
posted by smelvis at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2010

Best answer: Did you "expand" the traced image? Also you can adjust the live trace settings to produce filled paths rather than strokes only. You can cycle through the live trace presets to get an idea of what's possible.
posted by mumblingmynah at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2010

If it's not treating it as a group, it may be a compound path. Object menu > Compound path > release
posted by mumblingmynah at 9:52 AM on December 2, 2010

Live Trace is often more trouble than it's worth. But, mumblingmynah is directing you to the correct answer. You can release the Compound Path, or you can go to Live Trace -> Release or Live Trace -> Expand (you have to have the Live Trace selected for these options by the way).
posted by Slothrop at 9:56 AM on December 2, 2010

Response by poster: Expand seems to do the trick for the most part. Compound path isn't active, not sure why.
posted by smelvis at 10:12 AM on December 2, 2010

Yeah, expand is what you're looking for here, but just FYI, if you wanted to separate a path on a one-off basis, you could use the scissors tool for that.
posted by malapropist at 6:27 PM on December 2, 2010