Change Similar Colors in Illustrator CS5

If the color is solid without gradient, you can always use the Magic Wand Tool to select the color in question and then either press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it.

its solid color but it is all over the place throughout the graphic. Magic Wand just selects the whole thing.

Are you trying to remove the color of only one segment of the graphic? For example, if the graphic was white and blue swirl, the blue would be all around the image but you do not want to remove all of the blue but only certain portions of it?

Attached - I want to remove all of the white
4-26-2011-7-31-08-PM.jpg

Is something like this acceptable?

 

nope- need the white to go transparent.

How about this then? The white is now transparent. There is gray in the picture still (which is not black or red). PNG format to support transparency.

 

OK- brought it in to Photoshop, removed all white, exported as transparent png, and then brought in to Illustrator. I would love to know how to do this all in AI for future reference though.

Oops... sorry, now seeing the "Illustrator" part of this request. Sorry about that. But yeah, using Select Color replacement is what I (and presumably) you did...

If you want the white there to make holes in the black you have to select all the drawing and do: Object > Compound Path > Make Compound Path.

If it's just a question of changing the white dots to some other color you can do: Select > Same > Fill Color.