Illustrator

Live Paint limitations

Fill and paint attributes are attached to faces and edges of a Live Paint group—not to the actual paths that define them, as in other Illustrator objects. Because of this, some features and commands either work differently or are not applicable to paths inside a Live Paint group.

Features and commands that work on an entire Live Paint group, but not on individual faces and edges

  • Transparency

  • Effects

  • Multiple fills and strokes from the Appearance panel

  • Envelope Distort

  • Object > Hide

  • Object > Rasterize

  • Object > Slice > Make Guides

  • Make Opacity Mask (in the Transparency panel menu)

  • Brushes (You can apply brushes to an entire Live Paint group if you add a new stroke to the group using the Appearance panel.)

Features that don’t work on Live Paint groups

  • Gradient meshes

  • Graphs

  • Symbols from the Symbols panel

  • Flares

  • Align Stroke options from the Stroke panel

  • The Magic Wand tool

Object commands that don’t work on Live Paint groups

  • Outline Stroke

  • Expand (You can use the Object > Live Paint > Expand command instead.)

  • Blend

  • Slice

  • Clipping Mask > Make

  • Crop Area > Make

  • Create Gradient Mesh

Other commands that don’t work on Live Paint groups

  • Pathfinder commands

  • File > Place

  • View > Guides > Make

  • Select > Same >Blending Mode, Fill & Stroke, Opacity, Style, Symbol Instance, or Link Block Series

  • Object > Text Wrap > Make