Adobe Illustrator/Vector

[Beauty Through a Lens]

Anyone got Adobe Illustrator and know how to make a vector with a TRANSPARENT background?

[Manfred M]

Yes I have Illustrator and no, there is no native way of having a transparent background.

However, there is nothing to prevent you from creating a vector drawing, converting it to a raster, importing it into Photoshop. If you export the vector graphic to a *.psd file, and open it in Photoshop, you will get your vector art sitting on a transparent layer.

[Nicks Pics]

Isn't the BG transparent by default?

[Beauty Through a Lens]

Isn't the BG transparent by default?

Yeah but when you create a vector it gives it (the image) a white background just like it would if you flattened an image with a transparent background in Photoshop.

[Manfred M]

Isn't the BG transparent by default?

It is and it isn't, at least not in the same way that Photoshop user would view it and generate image output from it; and that's the context I'm coming from. If you create a drawing and output it as image file, whether it be a jpeg, tiff or png, you will get a white background when you view the image file.

To get transparency, you have to use an output format that does not assign a colour value to the base and overlay it into an image file. Exporting the output as a *.psd file or opening the *.ai file in Photoshop or pasting a *.png file on top of a base image (as a new layer) will all work. Try the same thing with a jpeg or TIFF and you'll get a white background.

It's probably getting a bit late for my brain to provide a totally clear explanation...

Based on some recent postings from Adrian, I strongly suspect he is trying to add some form of identification to his images to prevent his images from being ripped off, so this is flavouring my response a bit too.

[Manfred M]

Yeah but when you create a vector it gives it (the image) a white background just like it would if you flattened an image with a transparent background in Photoshop.

It isn't really a white background, you are just creating the vector graphic on an Illustrator artboard that appears to be white on your screen. Just because it seems to be white, doesn't mean it really is.

I use the described process to watermark some of my images. The watermark is prepared in Illustrator and then placed in a Photoshop layer so it shows up in my printed work.

[IzzieK]

If you work in layers, the background is always white, even in Photoshop you can do a watermark, disable the eye at the side of your selection and you can drag/move your drawing separate on top of your image.

[Manfred M]

Let's remember that while it may be Photoshop's 25th anniversary this year, Illustrator is actually the older sibling and is two years older (it turned 27 this year). The originators of both pieces of software would have initially targeted the print as a likely destination of the output, so showing the images on a white background by default simply makes sense.

When I look at the earliest word processing or spreadsheet software, these used the computer screen background colour (dark) and had light coloured letters and numbers, but when the graphical user interface (GUI) became mainstream, this converted to a white background (although I remember a line of displays that IBM produced that were called "paper white", as they had a white screen with black numbers and letters back in the DOS days). Even today, a white area in an image or printed output means no ink is deposited by the printer. I can't think of any printer that actually has "white ink" (other than perhaps in metal prints?), as the paper itself is what lends the whiteness to the image.

All that being said, this is rather irrelevant for images displayed on the screen, but by default, we stick to the tried and true "white". Certain types of output formats; jpegs is the best known one, don't make any accomodation for a transparent background, white other formats, like png do.

Once you get into software like Illustrator or Photoshop, some of these old conventions still hold, even a quarter of a century later. The process itself, doesn't care, but we have to be aware of how the programs handles properties like transparency in order to work these properties appropriately.

The advantage of developing logos and watermarks in Illustrator versus Photoshop is that the toolkit for doing so is much stronger. The font manipulation tools are much stronger than in Photoshop, and because we are using vector graphics, rather than a raster approach, drawing complex shapes is a lot easier too.

[Rebel]

Anyone got Adobe Illustrator and know how to make a vector with a TRANSPARENT background?

I'm not sure what you mean? Its always transparent? The "artboard" isn't part of the image.