: Illustrator's Unite Mode Fills In Whole Layer I am trying to recreate this section in a tutorial I completed earlier this week. I start off with a trace I made that is comprised of paths

@Murray976

It is important to understand what Pathfinder > Unite does.

Unite is intended to combine all fills and strokes into one object with the same fill/stroke as the top object in the stack.

So, in your example, if those white areas are white fills the result is a single shape using whatever the top object's fill color is. In this case it would appear the top object has a black fill. So everything is "united" and a black fill is used.

If you want the art to be combined, but only combined where fills are the same, you'll want to use Pathfinder > Merge. Merge only "unites" areas of identical fills/strokes. Merge does not combine areas of different colors.

You may find THIS QUESTION of use. It explains the various Pathfinder operations.

In the tutorial you were viewing/reading it is possible that artist did not use white fills. If the art was only comprised of the black areas, Unite would work fine. It's the varying fill colors which change the results of the Unite command.

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