need adobe illustrator help

[moulton712]

i have adobe illustrator cs3

so i have a vinyl cutter now. to get it to cut out images, i need to convert it to a vector format. vector format just means paths. so say i find a shocker "sticker" online and i save the image. then i put it into cs3. then this is where i need help.

this is the pic i will refer to.

i need to convert this to a esp or plt format. this is not as easy as said. i already tried 'save as' then scrolled till i found these formats. it saves the square boarder of the whole image. then when i put it into the cutting program it just shows a square boarder around the whole picture

is there a way where i can just mask the inside and make the paths from the black section? and how?

[Sentientbydesign]

I'm glad I came over here.

Ok, here's the deal.

I'm assuming you copied and pasted the image into Ill. When you live trace, then expand, not only will it trace the black portion, it will trace the white as well.

To fix this, use the WHITE arrow (Direct Selection Tool) and select only the white areas in the expanded trace.

One way to make this easier is to select the whole trace and change the color to black, red, green...anything but white.

Then use the direct selection tool to delete what you don't want.