Foo - Adobe Illustrator experts?

I'm working on a project (it's even bike related - Team Navy's RAGBRAI's jerseys) and just installed Illustrator. I'm having some trouble making parts of an image transparent. Seems I can make the whole thing transparent or none of it. Anyone think they could offer some advice? Feel free to PM if you'd rather. Thanks in advance.

Never used illustrator, or any other non opensource image program, but...
if you place the image as a toplevel over a transparant background, then seletc an area and use whatever eraser tool you have, this should turn the selection to transparant, no?

Well, I've placed it over the bottom layer and I need to make parts of this image transparent so the bottom layer (basic jersey colors) shows through the "blank" (white) parts of the image.

As for the eraser, I can't find one in Illustrator!

I've used Photoshop - Not sure how different the concepts are - but chances are they are close to the same or this concept may work. In Photoshop you select the part of the image you want to be transparent, simply cut that to a new layer and make that layer transparent.

Illustrator is vector based, you can't really 'erase' like you can in Photoshop. Ummm... I'm trying to picture what your trying to do.

First off, separate everything into different layers if you haven't already.

You can sorta cut out shapes from shapes, but not erase. Open the pathfinder tool bar (Window>Pathfinder) and play with some of those...

OK, but if if I need to put a round picture into a design, how do I get the corners to be transparent (since all files/pictures are some form of rectangle and not round)?

I'm working on a team jersey for RAGBRAI and want to put the Navy logo on the sleeve. How do I put it there so that only the logo comes through and the white corners of the square base don't? I've downloaded the logo but can't break it into layers, so I'm stuck with it seemingly. How do I round the square, so to speak?

Try using a clipping mask if you can't break it apart, this will give you a good idea http://jura.wi.mit.edu/bio/graphics/illustrator/illustrator.htm#crop


Usually files that you download from other places have their elements grouped or in some type of compound path. If its grouped, try selecting the object, right clicking and 'ungroup' (short cut Ctrl + Shift + G) or if its a compound path, right click and 'release compound path'. You may need to do it multiple times.

Edit: Or the file you have may be already in a clipping mask, which can also be taken apart by right clicking and "release clipping mask"

OK... I understand that. The question remains, however, how the heck do I make a circle or other shapes besides a square to create a clipping mask?

Edit: Nevermind... found it.

OK... I understand that. The question remains, however, how the heck do I make a circle or other shapes besides a square to create a clipping mask?

Use the pen tool for clipping paths....

I haven't figured out paths yet... I just installed CS2 last week.

I did grunt work for my sister(catalog work) and got pretty good at clipping paths.... can get irritating using the pen tool at first, but I got the hang of it and I flew with it....