How to Use Recolor Artwork in Adobe Illustrator Video Lecture | Adobe Illustrator: Become a Pro at Designing - Design Softwares

hey everybody welcome into this adobe
illustrator tutorial brought to you as
always by top vidcom today we're going
to cover a it's a pretty big a pretty
deep feature in Adobe Illustrator in
fact so deep that we're not even going
to get to all of it in this video
because it would just become so long and
so boring and so monotonous that I
wouldn't blame it for hitting the back
button and going and checking out a
different video
it's called recolor artwork let's check
it out so recolor artwork allows you in
Adobe Illustrator to take something like
this very multi shaped multicolored
piece of artwork and very quickly change
every single color in it and you really
just got to see it to believe it or
maybe some of you have tried it and you
know exactly what I'm talking about so
what I have here is I get this this
where I got all my background junk back
here but we can ignore that I have all
of these colors set right in this layer
and we're going to change those colors
the colors down here for the word
recolor that's its own layer we're not
going to mess around with that so here's
basically how this works
all of these colored squares all the
color diamonds really are all grouped up
in one layer group here so you can see
all I have to do is click on it it's
going to select everything so we just
want to select the artwork which we want
to recolor and this is just tons and
tons of these little squares and not
only are they different colors but each
one has a little gradient on it so it's
going to be particularly tricky select a
piece of artwork that you want to
recolor with a group two piece of
artwork you wish to recolor and hit the
recolor artwork icon right up here and
what's going to launch is the recolor
dialog box and it's kind of a
complicated looking dialog box if I do
say so myself now just a couple things
you can see here we have what are called
current colors and these are all the
colors as you may well have decipher to
this moment are the colors that are
currently in the artwork so for the the
dark red to not quite so dark red grade
it you can see we have a dark red
gradient and then a not so dark red
gradient so just to give you a quick
example
you can see here we have the new option
these are the colors which they're being
switched to so I could like double click
on this dark red and I could make it you
know a dark green or maybe maybe not so
dark gray maybe a bright green hit OK
and you can see that that dark red
gradient or just the door
grid color in that gradient switches to
that that light green in every one of
those shapes that has then I can do the
same thing with the red I can make this
like a super bright blue or maybe even
even lighter blue than that so we know
the super light blue you can see now our
grading on the bottom of this in every
single shape in every single gradient
goes bright green to that very light
sky-blue it looks pretty awful the way
you can undo this because you can't
really command or control Z in this
dialogue box you can get a little
eyedropper here that's going to restore
us to the colored artwork as it was when
we entered the recolor artwork recolor
artwork dialog box another really cool
thing you can do here is you can adjust
the hue and saturation of any individual
color sure but if you hit this little
flyout menu not only can you choose to
adjust RGB CMYK web RGB or lab colors
and tint in some cases but you have this
global adjust option that's what I want
to focus on and this allows you to just
drop or pump the overall saturation
brightness temperature or even
luminosity of the whole collective
conglomerate piece of artwork and again
if you don't like it you think it looks
terrible which I do hit the little
eyedropper it's going to restore us back
to the way things were just a moment ago
and now another thing we can do here is
instead of assigning color we're here in
the assigned tab we can choose the Edit
tab which is going to bring up the sort
of color wheel we can choose different
different ways to look at the color
wheel whether or not we want the segment
to color wheel or even just color bars
so these are all the colors that are in
our artwork currently we've got the art
of red dark red or kind of orange or
dark orange the lighter orange yellow to
a darker yellow teal blue blue and pink
so we have all these different colors
and we can choose to adjust any one of
these individual colors based on
whatever way we want to edit them let's
say HSB down here so I can select the
yellow and I can hit the flyout menu and
choose RGB and I'm going to get my RGB
sliders I can go to HSB whatever I want
to do I don't really like to work in
this mode I'm usually over here on my
regular color wheel now one of the
things that is interesting is you can
select any one of these color nodes and
like this dark blue is probably one of
the dark blues in my blue gradient there
so if I just change this to like a
peachy color we can see that sure enough
that lighter blue color across all those
blue squares gets changed that peachy
color I mean at my eyedropper to restore
order
we can also select this little chain
link icon if we do that it's going to
lock all the colors together so if I
grab and rotate one it's going to rotate
them all you can see we get this
wholesale color change and it's kind of
cool you know I mean you can go through
and just see like you know maybe maybe I
have the the relationship between all
the colors is right but the colors
themselves weren't exactly right and
that's actually kind of cool you know
kind of a teal to purple to pink to
yellowish orange to sort of greenish you
know seafoam green up at the top that
looks kind of neat again just going to
the eyedropper tool to restore order
once more and note that we also have
this icon here which is going to allow
us to apply sort of a preset set of
color swatches to our artwork so I can
go to like art history and say baroque
and you're going to see that it takes
not only does our color wheel look funky
by the way I should mention because
we're being limited to this this palette
of colors but you can see it
automatically is going to map them to
the existing artwork that you have out
there on your screen
and it's actually doesn't look too bad I
mean in the right application this would
be pretty cool and here you can see that
we have obviously a limited color wheel
because again the color wheel is not is
simply limited to our full range color
gamut of all those beautiful colors but
we're locked in to this particular
Baroque color palette which we've chosen
you can see reds are being changed all
these different colors are being changed
to these colors over in the new
thumbnail here to the right hand side of
this this color bar area of the dialog
box now before we head and really talk
about how to create your own custom sets
of colors we can just straight-up choose
one of the color groups that are over
here off to the right right off the bat
like the greys and if we do that you can
see that well we're just getting a
series of dark grey all the way up to
solid white and those are being applied
and that actually does look pretty cool
and one of the things that you can do
that I think it's particularly cool when
you're working with a just a set of
Gray's like this is we can come over
here to edit and you can see all of our
nodes are clustered way into the center
here if we have our link turned on so we
don't want to uncheck it so now the link
is off and what the link to beyond we
can select here and just start rotating
around and the bulk of our greys will be
transformed to maybe like a more bluish
color you can see we get this really
cool
monochromatic effect we can go with more
like an orange and red or you know
greenish yellow and blueish with a
little bit of like teal tips in there so
you can do a lot of really really cool
things beginning with this gray color
base you can come into edit and just
further edit and tweak and very quickly
get really really great color for your
artwork I'm gonna hit the eyedropper
once more before we head out of here I'm
gonna go back to the assign panel here
I'm going to choose this brights color
group now when I do this the bright
color group only has about 6 or 7 colors
here so what it's doing as you can see
here is it's taking the current colors
and it's kind of lumping them so it's
saying look hey you red to dark red and
pink to dark pink you're going to become
this red but I hit this little drop-down
menu we're doing what's called scaling
the tints so illustrator is going to
sort of tint which basically means it's
going to brighten some of those Reds to
kind of help mesh them to the lighter
colors in the current colors dialog here
so we can kind of still maintain some
semblance of the gradients that we had
before but it's all built on this base
red color which is in our brights color
group now if we don't want it to do that
and we just want it all to become that
solid red we can hit this exact option
and you can see well nothing happens
until I just click out here to make that
dialog box go away and what happened was
everything changed everything
exact match do you see that show all
these now see the the dark yellow and or
our sorry dark orange and orange color
are just becoming the solid orange
yellow and dark yellow are becoming just
yellow the TR the seafoam greens are
going to green blues and then the darker
blues are becoming purple the reason
that that happened is because here when
I went from scale tints you see how
everything now is going to scale that
tint I have this little option apply to
all checked on so when that's checked on
if I say hey look exact this and I
commit that change everything is going
to just exactly match there's going to
be no scaling of tint in an attempt to
emulate that gradient so if I come down
here to orange and I say look scale
tints I'm not going to check on apply to
all and I commit that well the reason
that it committed everything is because
I need to tick off apply to all first
and then I can go exact and I can commit
the change you can see now just the
orange is applied so by coming here say
scale the tints and apply it now
the orange is the only thing affected by
coming to here tick on apply to all and
go exact now everything is back to a
solid color so you can go in you can
play around I think I'm going to set
everything back to scale tints I kind of
like the way that looks it's not quite
saturated enough so we could go down
here to global just and say look pump
that saturation maybe make it a little
bit darker and get a just temperature a
little bit man not too much really and
you can just go in and really play
around with stuff as you see fit oh one
quick little tip - about working over
here in the grays color group you can
use this randomize the saturation and
brightness and what that's going to do
is it's going to kind of like just allow
Adobe Illustrator to randomly choose
some colors and you can use this option
here randomly change color order you're
going to see it's going to take the
colors you have in this stack and just
flip them around and give you all kinds
of you know just different effects and
cool color options a lot of the stuff is
automated stuff when it comes to the
automat well yeah of course automated
when it comes to the automatic features
but if you're just a kind of allowing
Adobe Illustrator to make those color
choices for you and when you don't want
that to be the case you always can come
into the Edit tab here and say look I
don't really want the Blues this really
needs to be much more heavily favoring
red or yellow or whatever whatever the
project you're working on dictates but
you have all of those options between
assigning between color groups and
everything you're working on here in the
recolor artwork dialog box alright let's
talk about creating our own color group
and how we can change and apply this
well first and foremost if we just go
back to our original color artwork here
we can take this entire string of colors
and save it as a color group see here on
our swatches panel I'm going to hit okay
I'm just going to cancel to get out of
that let's not make any change at all
over here on my swatches dialog box I
have my just default grays and these
bright colors as color groups I have no
other color groups okay I just keep that
in mind let's come back in here to
recolor artwork we have this artwork
that Adobe Illustrator is saying look
these are all 14 of the colors that are
being used to color this selected piece
of artwork I can give this a name I'm
going to call this originals month if I
can spell start that again
originals and I'm going to hit this
little folder icon which is the new
color group creator so we're creating a
new color group there so I hit OK you
can see hey look at that a new color
group has appeared in my swatches panel
so there's a few
we can do here we can go back into our
recolor artwork and we can go to like
edit we can lock all these together and
we can swing this bad-boy around and say
like hey here's the new here's the new
set of colors that we want or I can
change well you know change things a
little bit more drastically let's maybe
go with like we'll begin with a pink go
orange yellow green blue something like
that and you can create a brand new
color swatch you can see all these
colors are a little bit different than
the ones that we began with so you can
quickly create multiple color groups
that you can use throughout your project
I'm going to cancel that out because
this is kind of an interesting way to
apply color as well so we can select
this color group here in the swatches
panel we go to our color grower color
guide panel here in color guide under
window color guide and this is going to
show you the color harmonies in the way
all the colors are working one with
another so we can select like the base
color here as the red what we don't want
we probably don't want to select our
artwork when we're doing this you just
select your color group down here in
your swatches panel and we can select
that red and that's our base color and
we can change the base color actually so
we can say like hey you know instead of
red let's make our base color this teal
and you can see the entire the entire
color group is going to update and
change but it actually doesn't change
because we can see we still have our
original color group so we want to take
the string of colors and save it so we
can do that by hitting this little icon
here so we can hit that and you can see
it's going to save a second color group
there to our swatches panel now we have
a second color group we can play with
now check this out let's select our
group of artwork and let's say we want
to apply this string of colors to the
artwork all we need to do is double
click on the folder and what's going to
happen is it's going to open the recolor
artwork dialog box you can see it has
mapped that color to our artwork in just
the way it needs to be mapped so that's
pretty cool and we can come over here to
edit or we could you know maybe go to
just a global adjustments say you know
what I really want to boost the
saturation a bit you can see it's just
boosting the saturation of those little
handles there so let's go back to assign
let's boost the saturation it will boost
separation a little bit maybe take the
brightness up just a touch I don't think
we can really want to tweak the
temperature too much and we drop the
temperature a little bit and we could
have our perfect little set of colors
here for our artwork we could save this
as a color group or whatever we wanted
to do I'm just going to hit
okay in this case and say hey look would
you like to save the change the swatch
group color one before closing if I want
to I can say yes it's going to save it
I'm going to just say no in this case
and we have our totally recolored
artwork here in Illustrator oh you know
what and I will be remiss if I let you
go without showing you one last thing
here about recolor artwork so in your
color themes you can have a series of
themes you've downloaded from like Adobe
cooler or something like that and let's
say we download it I'll just take this
one here I have on top sandy stone Beach
ocean diver let's say we have that color
scheme and we want to apply that color
scheme of just five colors to this much
more complex piece of artwork can we do
that
well yes we can all we need to do is
select these color swatches in the color
themes panel select the first one hold
down shift select the one on the end
from the flyout menu here we can choose
add to the swatches panel we have them
selected in the swatches panel we can
hit a new color group there's a color
group dialog or new dialog box showing
up now I'm just going to name this like
sandy or something
you can see all the colors get dropped
into a new color group now we would do
the same exact thing select our artwork
double click on this color group and
it's going to recolor the artwork based
upon this and you can see because it's
only five colors it's going to group up
the colors as best it can
and sort of recolor them that way now
let's say let's just say we wanted the
blue to be attacking all the orange as
well all you really need to do is click
on this and drag it up and drop it on
that top color you want to replace and
those two colors will simply swap order
or swap position here in our in our
assignment bin here and if I don't want
the the sort of dark dark grayish blues
to attack those purples maybe I want
them to be on the blues I can change
that just like that and I want to move
the darker or MIDI medium blues excuse
me to the ends or maybe you know what I
really need the dark blues on the ends
that's kind of more like it and then I
want these blues to be what I want these
blues to be and I want these blues to be
maybe right in the center or something
like that you can go ahead and very
quickly take an existing maybe somewhat
limited color scheme or color group and
apply it to a more complex you know what
these are tons and tons of gradients
here it is this group of artwork we're
very quickly able to go in and tweak and
adjust and of course you can come to
edit and further adjust your actual
color scheme if need be I'm gonna hit
okay here it's gonna ask everyone to
save any changes I'm going to say I
don't want to save any of the changes
there to that color group so you can see
very very quickly we can go in and
recolor pretty complex pieces of artwork
using recolor in Adobe Illustrator
really something I encourage you to try
out for your line art and illustrations
and you know logo designs and you know
multiple graphical kind of like a
corporate graphics packages where you
have maybe ten different things from a
Twitter graphic to something that's
going on Facebook to something that's a
little icon for a UI design or maybe you
have sixty different UI icons that
you're working on and you very quickly
need to recolor them all and change the
color scheme recolor artwork is just the
tool to do that so if you enjoyed this
video make sure you like it comment and
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never miss another video in the future
for recoloring artwork in adobe
illustrator and sliding color nodes
around it working with color groups and
just it's such a complicated complex
tool it's it can be difficult to wrap
your mind around the entire thing all
the time but certainly the more you use
it the more you're just going to
understand okay I can do this I can't do
that and here's really where it works
for me that's how I know I use it I know
where I use it and how I use it
and that's when boom I'm so fast with it
that's when I start straying into some
of the stuff that I don't use very often
that it's kind of like oh wait how does
that work again but for all those
features in Adobe Illustrator and
recoloring artwork after recoloring
artwork after re coloring artwork that's
it get it got it good nathaniel Dodds in
Sudbury comm catch your
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