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I have a rasterized icon. As you can see, portions of it are blue. I also have an svg of this same icon but it is a compound shape and those individual pieces are not isolated; it is all black. So if i change the color, it changes the entire icon to that color. Is there an easy way to go about separating those pieces so that I can change the color of only those portions?
Probably not a straight-forward, easy task depending upon proficiency with Illustrator.
Assuming it's all one shape and not strokes.... The cross lines (blue) would need to be removed, repair the primary helix shape (black), then redraw the cross lines.
To be honest, it would probably be easier to simply redraw the shape in Illustrator with strokes, using what you have as a manual tracing guide for the initial curved path.
(right-click and open in new window/tab to view larger.)
...the above is constructed of only stroked paths. And all the strokes have rounded end caps set.
The initial stroke weights I used for the magenta and cyan strokes, to match the raster image in the question, was 16pts. When the appearance is expanded, the cyan removed, and the fill swapped to a stroke in step 5 above, it leaves a 16pt gap matching the raster image.
If the desire is to prevent stroke scaling, it is possible to Select All and then use Object > Expand to convert all the strokes to filled shapes. After doing so, the separate shapes comprising the primary helix can be combined to a single shape via Pathfinder or Shape Builder.
I noticed I didn't create the exact same gaps in the helix that the sample image has. It's easy enough to swap steps - reflect the shape first, and then use the scissors to cut pieces and remove them.
