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

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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.

Why won't Painter erase a keyword on only ONE image at a time?

This has been driving me crazy - I'd like to delete a keyword on select images. I have hundreds of keywords and many are nested, so sometimes I screw up and need to erase selectively. I thought this problem was a bug, but it has persisted into LR 2.4!
In Grid mode, I select Painter, choose a keyword and search through images where the eraser icon shows. However, if I then click on that image, Lightroom sometimes erases that one image, but more commonly erases four or five at a time! (No, they aren't highlighted.)
Any ideas? I'd sure appreciate them!
Deb

Thanks, Ian, but now I think it's a bug, not me. Occasionally, erasing with the Painter tool works fine, but more often it's truly a spray can out of control! I am using a tablet, not a mouse. Even if I highlight one image and then click quickly on the Painter, sometimes it will erase 3-6 additional images. I can't figure a rhyme or reason, except it seems more likely when I have hundreds of images showing.
I had wondered if there was a way to set the Painter to only erase one image at a time. If I slide it over images (like spraying), it often is out of control.
Thanks!

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,

Can i stop the live paint from merging all my layers into one?

Having everything in one layer is causing much frustration. I tried clicking the release button but i then just loose all colour.

do you mean combining objects onto one layer? a live paint group is as the name suggests a group, and can't be spread across multiple layers.

How do i apply one gradient across multiple live paint objects??

I need to apply a single gradient acros a number of live paint objects but am finding it annoyingly hard to find a way. I know that normally, to apply a gradient across multiple objects, you would need to make them all into one compound path but does this apply to live paint groups in any way?? Can what i need to achieve actually be done??
Thanks for any help given

1. With the Live Paint selection tool, shift-select those shapes you want to unify with a gradient.
2. Fill this (multi-shape) selection with your gradient. Now each shape is filled separately.
3. With the gradient tool, drag across all of the selected shapes.
"Annoyingly hard." Is that different than "hard"?

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.

When do we use Pentool, live paint bucket or brush?

For example, I want to draw a bush
I know there are many different ways to create: some use pen tool, some use live paint bucket tool, some use brush and eraser.
No matter what methods we use, it all leads us to the same result. I want to draw as smart and convinient as much as possible. So I dont understand in which case what method we should use. I am recommended to use basic shapes as much as possible when drawing. But when drawing complex objects, it takes too much time to use basic shapes to create
For example, In this case I think we should use brush and eraser
I think that using pentool can make my work goes faster. But why do people use live paint bucket tool and when we need to use basic shapes to create objects?
Is that right when I said that it depends on what style of art we are creating? (such as logo, flat UI design, artwork for children, ect...)
*Question from a newbie to illustrator TT_TT*

This is the kind of question I like most to see in drawing software forums and it's increasingly rare. So first, let me commend you for thinking in terms of seeking usual and customary best practice, rather than just assuming every whiz-bang, instant gratification cheap trick feature should be employed willy-nilly without ever a thought toward the elegance of your drawing's structure. It suggests you are serious about maintaining quality in your vector drawing, rather than just assuming anything that "looks good" on your monitor is "quality."
Unfortunately, one could write a whole book on this. So I'll try to keep the following general and reasonably brief. That may make it sound a bit preachy. If you want to talk more specifics, continue the thread conversation.
Vector drawing is, by its nature, an exacting medium. It strains against itself when it pretends to be "painterly."
There is, of course, a balance between a strictly purist mindset and real-world practicality. The way to find your balance is to approach automated effects (especially new ones) with a healthy dose of skepticism. Try them, sure; but closely examine the results, tear them apart, and try to understand what's really going on.
Regarding specific features you mention (Live Paint, Brush, Eraser), try them, examine the results, and consider whether the results are what you would expect if they'd been deliberately and efficently drawn. I find that Live Paint and Shape Builder (much the same thing) usually do a decent job of maintaining true-ness to the original paths, matching abutting edges which should be exactly identical without creation of many unnecessary anchors.
I find much the opposite to be true of features like Offset Path, Outline Stroke, and even moreso of features like Variable Strokes. Basically anything that involves automated enveloping (not just Envelopes, but also things like ArtBrushes) are suspect. I'm certainly not saying never use them, but be as aware as you can of what's going on. I leverage Artbrushes and Pattern Brushes to high advantage for certain things, but I do so knowingly, not willy-nilly. I rarely ever acutally use the Brush or Pencil or Blob Tools. I create the artwork contained in the Brushes as cleanly as possible and apply the Brush to deliberately-drawn paths.
Much has to do with the intended practical uses of the final artwork. For example, overlapping paths is standard fare for artwork destined for print. It's a functional deal-breaker for artwork that wil also be used to drive a cutter/plotter for signage. (Just one reason why proper logo master files should be as cleanly constructed as possible.)
Automated routines--no matter how seemingly "powerful"--do not have human discernment. The poster-child example of this is autotracing. An autotracing feature doesn't know a round iris from a hex bolt. The autotracing features of mainstream drawing programs don't even have any geometric shape recognition. So with infrequent exceptions, autotracing is overused pointless junk. It just trades one kind of raster-based ugliness (pixelation) for another kind of vector-based ugliness (shapeless jaggedness).
I know...you didn't mention autotracing. But I mention it as an extreme case of a principle that you can apply to the features you did mention: Ask yourself what a purely mathematical algorithm with zero aesthetic discernment is going to yield in terms of what you would consider elegant execution.
Again, I'll cite a well-known extreme: Anyone who has ever had to deal with auto-generated 2D DXF exports from CAD/CAE programs is familiar with the ubiquitous problem of dealing with thousands of tiny disjointed straight segments meant to represent a curve. Those tasked with handling such drudgery deal with it routinely. Some of them even devise additonal automated algorithms to make a bad situation marginally better. Yes, it "gets the job done." Yes, today's computer hardware can process the ridiculous amount of geometrically unnecessary data without choking. Yes, at the scale at which it will be printed in the parts catalog, the faceted shape will not be distractingly noticeable. But no self-respecting technical illustrator would ever actually draw the same subject that way from scratch, and his far more elegantly drawn-from-scratch result would be far more versatile and robust for multiple final uses.
Your bush example is not so complex as to make drawing deliberately and directly with the Pen impractical. In fact, doing so is much less work than the second example using a bunch of ellipses and applying boolean operations. But maybe you stylistically desire each edge of each blade to be a portion of a mathematical ellipse or even strictly circular. In that case, using automated boolean operations may be justified. But (especially in Illustrator) I would be sure to carefully examine the results. Illustrator's automated path generation routines (Pathfinders, Offset Path, Outline Stroke) have been notorious at various times (versions) for generating ugly and sometimes functionally problematic artifacts such as needless coincident anchors (for just one example).
Your second example of the "scratchboard" style illustration is a case-in-point of situations where we make value judgements and (hopefully careful) compromise between semi-automation and path-drawing purism. You're trying to emulate an expressly non-geometric aesthetic style. The particular example is a good one, because it's a "borderline" example. That drawing is simple enough that it could be drawn entirely anchor-by-anchor, and I would likely do it that way if, for example, it was going to be cut from sign vinyl enlarged to the scale of a trade show background or a wall hanging in an airport.
But if it were only to serve as a one-time placement as a spot graphic in a magazine, I might, for example, create an ArtBrush for certain portions of it, like the selected sun rays, and "let it go" for practical considerations. (Although I'd not deliver it as such; I'd consider it a matter of due dilligence to expand such semi-automated "live" onstructs and check the paths for reasonable cleanness.)
Bear in mind, Bezier-based drawing has been the mainstream for three decades now. We're not "fooling anyone" anymore. There now exists a new aesthetic discernment. Even our audiences are well aware that digital emulations of the randomness of so-called "natural media" are just that; contrived digital emulations. Our audiences view our artwork with a certain skepticism.
And when you put something in print, there's (hopefully, although I often wonder) still the matter of professional pride which bears in mind that our artwork will be viewed not by just the "unsuspecting public" but also by our peers; our colleagues. So you want to avoid any "dead giveaways" of execution by "cheap tricks" which "hurt the eyes" of other vector illustrators. At the scale viewed on this computer in this forum, there are details in that drawing which look like (whether they are or not) the kind of unintentional artifacts commonly generated by path operations and such. Such artifacts don't read as "natural randomness" of the emulated medium (again, we're no longer fooling anyone). They break the stylistic consistency of detail of the overall drawing and therefore look like unintentional but disregarded results of some automated feature.
So anytime you employ an automated path-generating feature, consider it normal to perform some cleanup on the result. Again, an extreme-case common situation exemplifies the principle. I put 3D Effect to use, but I would never deliver the raw results of it as final deliverable vector artwork. Automated features can be used as a rough-out tool; a means to an end, not the final end itself.
JET

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

Live Paint Bucket tool Question

Hello Illustrators.
Its been a while since I've used this tool. But I'm facing an issue I cannot understand.
I'm seeing some tutorials and as I try to follow along I cannot have the same functions of the tool as demonstrated.
My live paint bucket tool does not have the same options as the tutor. He can swipe his arrow keys and get the colours from the colour pallet, while I only have one colour available.
I have to continuously have to go to my colour pallet and choose a colour in order for my shapes to be filled. But when it comes to colouring a stroke of my shape then no problems I can swipe and get my colour
selection. Id like to be able to use it for my fill colour as well to be swipe my arrow keys and see the colours available if it makes sense.
Top Image is what Id like to achieve.
The bottom image is what I have in my art board document. as seeing only one colour is available, and that I have to click on my colour pallet to get a colour. No swiping with arrow keys is available.
Thank you.

Hello Craig!
yes it is! Its the 1st time I'm coming across this problem, I'm getting frustrated not being able to work this issue out...
As you can see everything is checked.
And also as you can see, like I was stating in my original post, the option to swipe with arrow keys only applies to the stroke of the shape, and not the fill.

Live paint bucket tool problem.

hello.
im trying to use my live paint bucket tool and when i choose it i dont get a bucket with 3 color blocks but rather just a bucket with one color block,whats wrong?

The Live Paint Bucket tool lets you paint faces and edges of Live Paint groups with the current fill and stroke attributes. The tool pointer displays as either one or three color squares, which represent the selected fill or stroke color and, if you’re using colors from a swatch library, the two colors adjacent to the selected color in the library. You can access the adjacent colors, as well as the colors next to those, and so on, by pressing the left or right arrow key.

Live paint seems to make lines thicker

I'm new to illustrator, and I'm having some issues with the live trace and live paint tools.
When I use live trace, my image looks exactly as it should. However, when I change the image to a live paint group and then begin to change some of the colors, the lines seems to get thicker.
Why does the image look okay after being traced, but changes once made into a live paint group?

5) Click on one of the black lines in the image and change color to Pantone Black C
You haven't described at all what settings you used for the autotrace, or what kind of objects you have after expanding it. Are the black objects filled, stroked, or both?
Also, the LivePaint tool can apply Fills and/or Strokes, depending on how you set its options. Based on your description, you may be applying black strokes to the autotraced black-filled paths. That would, of course, result in "thickening" what you are calling the black lines.
JET

Live Paint Suddenly Changed??? PLEASE!!!!

Grr. I have jusgt recently began using live paint and I was in love with it! I live painted an entire illustration and then after almost completing my poster, I noticed my illustration had changed. I used a lot of gradients in my illustration and they were all gone, and there is this black stroke around all of my work. WTF happened!!!
This is what I had originally.
This is what I have now!! Utter trash. Ugh.
Here is a close up of the black line ****.
PLEASE HELP! I am absolutely clueless and totally desperate.

There are some issues with live paint in CC.
You'd better not move it, copy/paste it or add lines to it. If you want to do one of these, better expand beforehand.

Live Paint to Separate Layers

Is there a way to have your paths on one layer and directly live paint the fill areas to a different layer? I have a file with thousands of small spaces that I need to paint and I need to separate the line work (borders) from the colors (fills). I understand the expand command but think it would be a hassle to paint everything and then expand it and reselect the fill areas to a different layer.
Thanks,
Caleb

Copy and paste in front.
Lock one and hide it, then give the other a fill of none, now paint the strokes you can chose only the strokes in the live paint options just as you can for the fills only.
Now you only have to do it once and keep them of the same layer so you can group them.

How do you connect lines for a drawing in order to use the live paint bucket tool?

Hello! Im fairly new (okay not really) to using adobe illustrator
I used the Image trace tool to outline this drawing of Captain America but unfortunately the lines arent connected and therefore
messes up my colouring completely when I use the Live Paint Bucket tool.
Is there a way to connect the lines so they are closed when I colour it? Or is there another way to color this drawing?
Help would be greatly appreciated!

Those gaps are very wide. Draw some paths and apply no fill, no stroke to them.
Then make the live paint. In case the live paint already exists, you can go into isolation mode and then draw the paths. Or draw them and use Object > Live paint > Merge

Live Paint erases one of my strokes

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