Expert: Tom Rouze - 6/19/2006

Question
Hi Tom

I'm working with the free 30 day trial as I only have one logo to design so can't justify buying the full version so I realise this may not be possible...

I have a design that I have copied itno Illustrator and everything is great except that I want to upload it to a printers for printing on T-shirts and need a transparent background. At the moment the background is white.

Can you point me in the right direction bearing in mind i have very little experience with design software other than Paint prior to this.

Thanks in advance.
Joanne

Answer
Hi Joanne,

It sounds like what you have is a placed image brought into Illustrator.  Simply put, since the image was created in another program or scanned it retained it's background color.
I'm not too familiar with Paint but what you need to do, in a basic sense, is create a mask around the art to block out the background.  I'm guessing that this can be done in Paint.  It would be something like the equivalent, in a crude form, of tracing around the printed art with an xacto knife leaving only the part you want printed.  It was done this way before computers became popular for Graphics.

If you have access to Photoshop I can give you some suggestions that would help with this.  
Or if you send the original art to the printer they should be able to do this for a nominal charge.  Some places are no charge to do this.
Thank you,

Tom