Convert to Live paint

Hello
I have placed an image into Illustrator CS4 Which I created as line art in CorelDraw X5. I want to use Illustrator to color it.
When I try to make it into a Live paint group, I get the message "The selection contain objects that cannot be converted. Live Paint groups can only contain paths and compound paths. Clipping paths are not allowed."
can anyone show me what I am doing wrong?
Thanks for any help.

Thanks Larry
That information was absolutely priceless!
You were spot on there - I have released the clipping mask and it is now a live paint group. Fantastic!
Regards
Peter.

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I'm new to Illustrator and I am trying to use the live paint tool.

I have an image that I have outlined into different sections with the pen tool and now when I try to select the outlines and go into live paint> make, it prompts me with an error message saying "Selection contains objects that cannot be converted. Live paint groups can only contain paths and compounds paths. Clipping paths are not allowed." Is there a way to convert this so that I can fill in the selected areas with the live paint tool, or am I totally out of luck? -Not sure if this matters but I have a photo underneath the pen tool's outlines because I'm trying to edit it into more of a 2D geometric print which is why I need to live paint tool to help me fill in the shapes.

Put the image on a new layer below the artwork and lock the layer so the image cannot be selected. Did you use a mask of some sort? put that on the lower layer as well.

Clipping Paths + live paint?

Hi all
I have a group of shapes that I am trying to use live paint on. However all attempts to apply the tool have given me the following error -
"the selection contains objects that cannot be converted. Live paint groups can only contain paths and compound paths. Clipping paths are not allowed."
i used the release clipping path command. Didn't work; it created a visual abomination that I screenshotted for your amusement. The second image below is the shape with the mask applied. So the second image is what I want it to look like, but is the one that I cannot edit with live paint.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d188/OphidianShenzi/shape-clippingmaskreleased.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d188/OphidianShenzi/shape-clippingmaskstillapplied.jpg
Hope I made that clear?
How do I get over this problem and convert these to a live paint group that looks like it's supposed to?
Many thanks in advance for your help, it is such a wonderful supportive community we have here.
-S

That does not look quite right, perhaps you have more than one clipping path and or an opacity mask.
Can you do a screen shot of the layers panel perhaps there is an order in which mask can be properly release by.

How do I convert coloring book page to live paint group?

Have coloring book and clip art image. How do I color them?

Here are the steps you can use.
Step 1: Create a new Illustrator document and insert the scan / photo of the image.
File > New
File > Place, navigate to the image, select it, click Place
Click and drag on the page to insert the image.
Step 2: Turn the pixel based image into Illustrator vector art
With the Selection tool, click on the Image to the select it.
Display the Image Trace panel (Window > Image Trace).
From the Preset menu choose an option that closest resembles your image trace requirement, and select Preview and click Trace.
Check the results, and make adjustments to the settings as required.
Once you're happy with the result, in the Control panel, click Expand. Note that once you expand the Image Trace you will no longer be able to adjust the trace settings, and you've created Illustrator vector art.
Step 3: Change the artwork to a Live Paint group and start colouring.
Select the vector art, and choose Object > Live Paint > Make.
You can now use the Live Paint Bucket and Live Paint Selection Tool to colour your artwork.
Cari

Thin white line between line art and live paint fill?

I am using live paint to paint cartoon character illustrations. The artwork is brought into Illustrator CS3 and live traced. Then I convert it to a live paint group and use the paint bucket to fill. Everything looks fine no matter how much I zoom in. If I bring the AI file into Photoshop CS6 I can see a thin white line between the black line art and the fill. This is most noticeable where black meets black. I can also see this sometimes in file previews while browsing through files. If the white line cannot be seen in Illustrator is the file ok? I did just upgrade to CS6 if that would make a difference.
Thank you for any help.

If the white line cannot be seen in Illustrator is the file ok?
Without knowing specifics,nobody knows.
"Okay" for what?
If it looks okay to you in Illustrator, then it's okay for viewing in Illustrator.
If the export of it does not look okay in Photoshop at 1:1 or higher zoom, then it's probably not okay for whatever you're going to do with that raster image.
If it's printed to a low-res composite printer, then it may be okay, because the printer may not be able to resolve the whitish pixels.
If it's printed for commercial (color-separated) reproduction, it may not be okay, depending on the scale at which it will be printed, and on other considerations partially described below.
The autotrace routine does not build traps. Typically, when you color-fill cartoon line art manually, you don't make the shapes that define the fills merely "kiss" the black line work, as would the default treatments of a stupid autotrace. The black line work typically overprints the fills, thereby creating printing traps.
Suppose a portion of your cartoon is a hand-drawn closed circle. The black line work is irregular; it varies in width, having been drawn with a marker or a brush. The circle is colored in with a medium green. There are no sloppy gaps in the original between the green and the black.
You scan it and autotrace it. Unless you apply some deliberate care to make it do otherwise, the autotrace is going to create a compound path, filled with black, and with no stroke; and a green simple path which (hopefully) exactly "kisses" (abuts) the black path. Adobe's on-screen antialiasing of the edge where the two colors abut may or may not cause your monitor to display a faint whitish or grayish sliver between the two colors.
Similarly, Photoshop's rasterization of it, or the rasterization of a raster export filter may do the same, and may actually result in some off-color pixels along the edge. (Your description of the scenario kinda raises the question of why you are auto-tracing something that you're then just going to rasterize in Photoshop anyway. Why do that? Why not just work with the scan in Photoshop?.)
So let's leave Photoshop out of the picture and assume you are autotracing it because you want vector artwork. You zoom way in to see if the whitish sliver enlarges. It doesn't, so you assume it's just an aberation of Illustrator's on-screen antialising. And then someone tells you you're in the clear. But are you? Not so fast.
Let's assume the artwork is destined for commercial (color-separated) printing. Further assume the color of the autotraced black is 100% K, and the color of the autotraced green is 100Y 50C. Three inks involved. None of those three inks are shared between the two objects. So even if the paths do, in fact, perfectly abut, there is no "wiggle room" built in for the minor alignment shifts that almost aways do occur on press.
Bottom line: Even if you do determine that the common antialiasing aberations that frequently occur on-screen in Adobe apps is just that—just an onscreen aberation, that does not necessarily mean your file is suitable for commercial color-separated reproduction.
First, you need to understand that autotracing is not the one-click, instant "conversion" of a raster image to vector artwork that far too many think it to be. Just like everything else, you don't just launch a program like Illustrator, start autotracing things willy-nilly without understanding what's really going on. Just like anyting else, you can use an autotrace feature intelligently or...well...not.
You have options. Illustrator provides an auto-trapping feature. Read up on it in the documentation so you understand what it's all about. Alternatively, you can expand the results of your autotrace, select all the black linework and apply a composite color that includes 100% K and reasonable percentages of C, M, and Y (a so-called "rich black"). Or,depending on the artwork and the desired results, you may consider doing the autotrace as centerlines so you have stroked paths, not just filled paths for the linework. That way, using the flood fill (so called LivePaint) will cause the auto-created fill objects to extend to the paths, not just to the edges of their strokes. Then set the linework to overprint.
At any rate, if you are doing this professionally, you need to read up on the principles and practices of trapping and color separation.
JET

How to make an eps exported from a pdf to live paint

hey,
im working on Autocad plans in illustrator, they were printed to pdf and since you cant make a "live paint" group with a pdf, i converted it to an eps using adobe reader 8 pro.
but for some reason when i try to make a live paint group using the EPS it wont work.
any ideas?
thanks in advance

Do a search on these forums for any of the thousands of times this question has been asked and any of the thousands of times it's been answered.

X on bottom of Live Paint Bucket tool

Thanks guys for helping me find the Paint bucket tool.
All I have is a simple cartoon face that I have drawn, scanned and brought over and using Live Paint.
I can get the paint to fill the face area, but it won't let me do one of the ears. It gives me an X on the bottom of the paint bucket.
What can I do to get that X to go away and let me fill that ear with a colour?
Thanks
Bob

Select the repsective object, convert it to a Live Paint group first from the Object menu. If that option is not available, you may need to expand the object first and release any clipping masks or nested compound paths.
Mylenium

Big problem, Live Paint Bucket changing strokes

Hi all, so in the first picture you can see the finished line work. When I fill the face with a color in Live Paint, it changes the strokes and makes them appear jagged in varying widths, it's especially obvious on the eyes, ears, and hair - it looks like it is applying Pathfinder>Divide. I have the stroke set to nothing when I apply the fill, please help!

how about this?
1. duplicate the lineart and put it underneath the layer and lock the original
2. convert the lineart into an outline stroke by going to Effect>Outline Stroke then Object>Expand Appearance
3. Open Pathfinder Pallete and then select all and Unite/Add it.
4. change everything to no stroke and no fill
5. select all then convert it to live paint
6. deselect the converted path and start using live paint bucket.
7. after that expand it and ungroup so you can move the fill path. also you'll notice that it will remove all path you have been converted.
reply if it works,

Live Paint erases one of my strokes

I've built two different colored strokes around some text (inner layer is green, outer layer is red). When I convert this to the Live Paint Mode by clicking the letters with my Live Paint bucket, a warning comes up telling me certain things might be lost. I press okay, and the red outer layer of the text dissapears. I want that layer to stay though! I've attached pictures of this process. I'm new to this and would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you! -Sebastian

Thank you Scott!
I think I understood what you are saying... but I found a different way of doing it. I now have two strokes going on on top of each other- One is just WIDER than the other. I've attached a picture displaying the effect I was looking for. This is where I'm at now... but my final step is to change the black color of some of the letters on the inside... For example: as you can see, i've highlighted a portion of the "M" that I want to change from black to white using the Live Color bucket. My only problem is that it is telling me that is already white... ???? Could I maybe export this as an image and change its colors that way? Is there another method to change those black letters on the inside to white?
-Sebastian

Can't use Live Paint

I just downloaded the trial version of Illustrator CS4 for a Mac. For a class project. I am following my teachers steps to the letter, but i can't. I am suppose to choose a letter change it's size and angle then duplicaate it and resize and change the angle of the second one. Then select live paint and paint in the over lapped sections of letters. The problem is that when i select the two letters and go to live paint it won't let me choose "make" so i can't paint it. And i can't use the fill bucket it says "the selections contains objects that cannot be converted." Anyone know why it's doing this and just so you know i am a COMPLETE newbie at this it's my first time using this program.

Sounds like you're trying to make a LivePaint Group out of live text objects. You can't do that. As the alert says, you have to use paths.
You can convert the text objects to paths by selecting Type>Create Outlines.
JET

Using paintbrush on Live Paint files

Is there a special thing that needs to be done to a file before you can use a paint brush on it after it's been converted via the Live trace function? When I try to use the brush the icon gives me the typical "not possible" icon (Ghostbuster's logo). What am I doing wrong? Or is it not possible at all?

Hi Mike!
Unfortunately, Live Paint groups don't support live brushes.
:) Mordy

Live Paint Error Message

I wonder if I could contribute something to the forum. It isn't clear (to me anyway!) that one cannot create a Live Paint group if there is text in the area to be converted. This I discovered fairly rapidly but the regular error message is very general in content, it is up to the user to discover what is inhibiting the conversion. But I have found that, if I create text on paths and then delete the text, it is easy to leave isolated anchors on the artwork which are barely visible and they will inhibit the creating of a Live Paint group. When I hit the snag, I looked in all the usual places online but there didn't seem to be any obvious threads. In the end I worked it out for myself. This is not a criticism, I think Illustrator CS6 is superb!
Steve

You might try using Object>Path>Cleanup to remove stray points and empty text paths.

Live Paint

I converted my image to live paint so I can quickly fill in all the areas of my image with color. But now I want to go back and do highlights and shadows and have them go behind the lines. What do I need to do?

I guess what I'm trying to do is separate my lines from the filled in areas, that should allow me to draw my shadows and highlights in the colored areas without covering my lines. What would expanding the live paint group do?

Illustrator CS6 - Live paint makes paint strokes thinner

Im fairly new with illustrator, when i try and use live paint by selecting the brush strokes then going object > live paint > make, it makes my strokes really thin and it is really annoying, is there any way of avoiding this?

This issue can be probably solved by expand the object before convert it into a live paint object.
From the illustrator guide:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/illustrator/cs/using/WS714a382cdf7d304e7e07d0100196cbc5f-6507a .html
if you try to convert an object that uses brushes or effects, the complex visual appearance is lost in the conversion to Live Paint. However, you can retain much of the appearance by first converting the objects to regular paths and then converting the resulting paths to Live Paint.

Reclaiming a stroke after making it part of a live paint object

The "s" in the screenshot below was a path filled with black. I had the lineart done by and artist and then I go in and fill the color, so I'm 99.9% this description is correct. I filled it using livepaint. It's now a livepaint object... I need to go in and correct my blacks (to rich black, this is a CMYK doc -- I have another thread about that, LOL). Now, when I select the path that contains the black, if I try to change it's fill to the proper black, it fills the entire object with that color. I just need to change the area within the yellow path you see below and NOT the light blue area... It seems that once it converted to livepaint, I lost the ability to change the fill within the yellow path (which is just the outline of a stroke of black, for lack of a better description. It looks like a stroke, but it's a fill or WAS a fill before it became a livepaint object. Anyone know how I can change just the black part? Thanks.

Fill it with the live paint bucket selecting the rich black swatch first.
If it is pat of a live paint group that is what the paint bucket is for otherwise with the selection tool, the black arrow double click on it to enter isolation mode and now fill it or select as you have and from the layers panel drop down select isolation mode and now fill it.
Or select it and only it and go to Edit>Edit Colors>Recolor Art and select the new color area and add a new color and select the rich black swatch.

Convert to Live paint

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