Hey guys, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today we're going to talk about
how to recolor your artwork using a color scheme from a photo or from something you
found online.
First, I've got open this 40 free flat icon pack, and the link for that is in the description.
I just copied these icons down here so I can show you how to do this.
I also grabbed this.
We are going to use this to recolor these icons.
The link for this is also in the description.
The first step is to get this image into your color palette.
So I'm going to clear my swatches.
To do this you can do Select All Unused in your Swatch Palette, and just delete those.
OK, so I'm going to select this.
And then I'm going to go up here to Image Trace, and I'm going to choose 16 colors.
And then I'll hit this little Image Trace Panel button, and that'll bring up your palette.
So we have the preset set at 16, and we can also choose a different amount of colors.
I'm going to go ahead and say 10 instead of 16, and you can see what it is doing the preview.
It gives us some sort...a little bit of a muddy color palette but that's fine.
My Trace button is grayed out because I've already traced and then we'll hit CMD E to
expand.
Make sure Object and Fill are both checked, and say 'OK', and now we can get rid of our
Image Trace palette.
Now we have all these colors, and if you use your A Tool, you can click in here and see
the color here.
Let's select the whole thing with the V Tool.
Then come over here to your Swatches palette and click New Color Group.
In here you'll want to do Selected Artwork, Convert Process to Global, and Include Swatches
for Tints and say 'OK'.
Here are all 10 colors that we're using.
Now I don't really think we need quite this many.
So let's merge some of these.
I'm going to get this color, I'll click on that first, then hold CMD or CTRL on a PC,
and click the color next to it, which is a similar color.
And then you can merge these.
So now we only have, I think 9 colors.
Alright, let's go over here and highlight all of your icons, and we'll recolor these
using these colors from this image.
OK, so let's click on the Recolor Artwork, pie shape up here at the top.
And we'll choose this color group.
So now what it's done is kind of guessed what colors we want our image... make sure Recolor
Art is checked.
It kind of chooses what colors go to what colors over here.
Let's go to the Presets...this little Color Reduction Options beside it, and we'll choose
'Lightness - light to dark', and that changes everything on the left side to be light to
dark and everything on the right side to kind of be light to dark.
We can pull this down here, and it switches them out.
And that way it recolors the artwork in a way that all the dark stuff becomes dark again
and all the lighter stuff becomes light.
And I think that is the most important thing to do when you're doing this because otherwise
it recolors it really weird and it gets kind of confusing.
But if you want to change a certain color to a different color, you can actually just
grab that color like the green.
You can see where it was in your artwork by clicking this down here.
So it's the one with the little magnifying glass.
And then you can change that to a different color.
So let's say you want that to be this purple color down here.
You can drag this here, and that will change it to the purple.
We'll unclick that.
You can see now that those two parts have changed to the purple color.
And this does take a little bit of playing around with, to get it to do what you want.
But I wanted to show you this, and show you that is possible, but it is a little hard
to use.
So that is my tip for the day, you guys.
Let me know in the comment section if you are having any trouble or if you found this
helpful.
Thanks, guys!!!