Wednesday, September 28, 2016

transparency - Save Illustrator as PDF with transparent background


Is there a way to export my artwork as PDF so that it has a transparent background? Something like exporting objects only... whenever I try to save my .ai as pdf, it always comes with a full white background. If I try to save as eps, I get a chunky white background (where it has white rectangles behind the artwork only where the artwork exists, so there are transparent chunks).


If I export as png, I get an image like what I'm looking for. Is there any way to do that in a vector format?



Answer



Long story short, .eps is the slow cousin of .pdf. Use .pdf.


Your .pdf problem is, I think, no problem at all.. As long as you save your file as Pdf 1.4 or higher, you should be good to go. Pdf 1.4 is the earliest pdf version to support transparency.


Since you said that "it always comes with a full white background", I'm assuming that you tried viewing the .pdf in acrobat ( or any other preview thingie you might have used ), which showed you a white background. I'd say that pretty much every .pdf capable viewing application has a default setting that shows a white background for convenience.


You can just try opening the .pdf in some editing application like Illustrator or Indesign or Photoshop to make sure, or In Acrobat settings Cmd+K > Page display > Transparency grid, you can turn on the view that shows you the transparency grid that is much like the one Photoshop has.


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