: How to save an .AI & .TIFF file with transparency A client asked me to send the following files .ai, .eps, .pdf, .psd, .tif ( created in Adobe Illustrator) with transparent background. After

@Turnbaugh909

Apple's Preview is not a professional-level image viewer/editor. It's made for home users that are merely viewing basic image formats such as jpg, png, gif, and pdf. There are many standard PDF features which Preview will not support. And Preview has never been designed to view .ai files, and .eps files are hit or miss (not dependably displayed).

The instant you need anything remotely above the rock-bottom basic user level image formats, you need to abandon Apple's Preview for a better application. If a client is insisting that "Things don't look right in Preview" then you'll need to explain all this to them. Do NOT "dummy down" files so Preview will display them properly. This will merely lead to incorrect files for production.


.ai and .eps inherently have no background. If you are seeing a background, it's the fault of the viewing application not the file. Unless you specifically added a background to your .ai and .eps file, there is no background.
.tif with a transparent background is a fairly recent hybrid format. The easiest method of achieving such a file is to just copy/paste your Illustrator artwork into Photoshop and a Smart Object, then save as a .tif file with layers (and transparency). I do not believe Illustrator has the ability to save a tiff with transparency.
.pdf files can present a bit of a viewing problem. All pdfs appear to have a background in most applications. Even if the file itself does not have a background. Acrobat, Reader, and certainly Preview, will always show a white background. There is no way to generate a PDF for these applications without the appearance of a background. However, if you open the PDF is a more robust application, such as Illustrator, Photoshop, Graphics Converter, (and I"m guessing Gimp), you will not have a background. So really, for PDF, it depends on what is viewing the PDF.

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@Samaraweera207

You don't say what software you're using, but the following applies to Photoshop and Illustrator:

When you are saving a TIFF out of Photoshop, you need to have the 'Layers' option selected at the bottom of the Save window. This will create a TIFF with a transparent background. However, I don't think Preview can show the transparency of a TIFF (the option is greyed out when I try) so you can't check it that way, but you could check the transparency by placing it in a document with something behind it to be sure.

To save an AI file out of Illustrator with a transparent background, you need to have Clipping Masks applied to your Layer(s) in Illustrator. Otherwise the default is to show the canvas / page underneath as the background. That one will show as transparent in Preview.

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