Transcripts
1. Intro: [MUSIC] In this class, you will
learn how to streamline the process of recoloring
artwork in Adobe Illustrator. You will learn how to take
one piece of artwork and transform it into 10
different calibrations. Hey, I'm Maja Faber. I'm a professional service
pattern designer and I use Adobe Illustrator
on a regular basis to create my patterns
and illustrations. Most of the time I create several different colorways
of one piece of artwork. This process can be really time-consuming and honestly
quite frustrating. In this class, I'll teach you the method that I use to recolor artwork more efficiently to
save time and frustration. This is an intermediate
class and you need to have basic understanding of Adobe
Illustrator to get started. I also recommend that you watch my class "how to quickly create a perfect color palette in Adobe Illustrator" before
you start with this class, as you need a couple of
pre-made color palettes in Adobe Illustrator to get
started in this class. If you're interested in
learning my method of how to quickly recolor one piece of art into several
different colorways, then join me in this
fun and creative class.
2. Class Project: Your project in this
class is to create a few different color variations
of either your artwork, or my artwork that you
can download in class. Watch the export lesson by the
end of this class to learn how to export and share
your project here in class.
3. Class Resources: In this class, I've included
a free downloadable file with my artwork
that you can use to practice recoloring
in this class. You can, of course, also use your own
vector-based artwork in Adobe Illustrator. It's totally up to you. If you want to use my artwork, this is how it looks. I've included one AI
file and one PDF file. The AI file is the
one that I will use, but I included a
PDF file as well. If you have some
trouble downloading the AI file in your version
of Adobe Illustrator, try the PDF file instead. They are exactly the same
file with the same function. To download the file, you go to the class and the
project and resources tab. In the right column, you will see two files. You can tap the one of
these that you want to use, and then you just tap the file to use it in
Adobe Illustrator. A little note before we get
started with this class. If you want to use my artwork, you are free to use
it for learning purposes in this class only. You are, however, not allowed to re-purpose it, resell it, or in any way share it and say that it's your artwork
created by you. This is my artwork created
by me with my copyrights.
4. Importing Your Color Palettes: The first thing that we
will do in this class is to use pre-made
color palettes. This is where it's good to have some already made color palettes that you can use that you
know are well-balanced. That is why I recommend you
to watch my other class, how to quickly create a
perfect color palette in Adobe Illustrator before
you watch this class. That way you already have your pre-made color palettes and you know that they
are well balanced. If you have watched my class, you can follow these steps. Otherwise, you can just import other color palettes that you already have created. This is the first
step in this class. If you watched my other class, you might have saved your
Swatch Library as an AI file that will have brought
it to this folder User-Defined under
Open Swatch Library, User-Defined, and Winter 2021 was what I named my
color palettes too. I tap that one and then I have a few different
color palettes here. I will just tap the color groups to import the palettes
in my swatches panel. Then I can just close
the Winter 2021 window. The next thing that
I wanted to do is to Save this color
palette that is in my original file because I might want to
use that as well. I will just select
all of my artwork with the selection tool
and tap New Color Group. Tap Okay and there
you have saved all of the colors in your
original artwork. As I mentioned in the
downloads lesson, this is the artwork that you can use in class if
you want to follow along and use my artwork
to re-color or you can, of course, use your own artwork. As I mentioned before,
if you use my artwork, it's only for learning purposes. You can't of course, share
this piece of artwork and say that it is your creation. With that said,
let's head over to the next lesson where we
will start the re-coloring.
5. Recoloring Your Artwork: In this lesson, we would recolor
this piece of artwork or the artwork that you
have created and that you're working
with at the moment. Let's create 10 different
color variations of this piece of art. The first thing that we
will do is to just create 10 copies of this artwork. I will actually create 10 artboards with
the artwork on it. Because you never know how
you want to export the files, and for some export
alternatives, you need to have your
artwork on artboards. I'll just hold down
my Option key, click, and drag to make a copy. Then do the same, click and drag, and let's make five
of these in a row, and then we can do five beneath. I will select all
of the artboards, hold down Option key, click and drag to make
five more copies, tap the selection tool, and here we have 10 pieces of the same artwork that are
exactly the same at moment. Now we will start the
recoloring process. There are many ways of recoloring artwork in
Adobe Illustrator, I'm sure, and in this class, I'm teaching you the
technique that I use to keep this process efficient because I know that you can dig really deep into this
recoloring process, and you can spend
hours and hours trying to figure out
what colors to choose, and sometimes that
might be right for you, but sometimes you need to spend your time
on something else. And that is why I'm here
to teach you how to do this process efficiently when
you need or want to do so. For the first print, I will just keep it as
it is with those colors, and I have saved those colors in a color group in
the Swatches panel. Let's zoom in on
the second print and I will tap that one, and I know that it's grouped, so I have selected
everything there now. I will go to the
Recolor Artwork Tool. Click Edit, Edit Colors,
and Recolor Artwork. This is where we will make
most of our recoloring, at least the first step
of the recoloring. I will tap Advanced Options, and here I have the full
recoloring artwork tool. Here, I can choose to
recolor my artwork. There are many settings
that you can do in this app and many different
ways of recoloring. I will just teach you my
method that is really quick, and I won't dig deep into
this tool in this class. The first thing that we do here is to decide if we want to keep the background white
and maybe the details black. For this first print, let's do just that. Automatically the recolor
artwork tool has detected the black as color that I
don't want to edit. If you would tap that color, it will ask you if
you want to add a new color to the
current harmony. You can type Yes there, and this way it
will change all of the colors in the artwork. But if you don't want to change some colors
in the artwork, you tap the little arrow
here by the colors, and the ones that are these
dashes instead of arrows, they will keep the same color
as they have at the moment. I don't want to change the cream white background on this one or the black details. That way, I have four
colors that I will change. What I do is to tap one
of my color palettes. Let's use the first one, the red and pink one. Instantly, I think that
that looks really good. I would actually
like to keep that. But if I do want to check out different variations
of this color palette on this piece of artwork, I will tap this
little button that says Randomly
change color order. This is how I go about to
change colors in my artwork. I'm pretty happy with this one as it looks at the moment, so I will just keep that one, and then I tap Okay, and when it asks me if I want
to save changes to Swatches group before closing, I say No. I made my first
color variation of this piece of artwork and that
this part of the process, you don't need to think that much about every
color being perfect. Just go ahead and change the
colors to something that feels good for you
at this moment, and then we can go in
and change the colors and adjust the details of
the color choices later on. I'm pretty happy with that one, I will leave it like
that for the moment. Then I will tap the next one, go in, and Recolor Artwork, Advanced Options and
let's make all of the ones on the first row with white background
and black details. We can see what we want to do with the ones
on the second row. For the next one, I will
tap my next color palette. In here, I will tap
to randomly change color order until I find something that looks good. That looks pretty good to me
and then I tap Okay and No. I might want to adjust the colors here a
little bit later on, but let's leave it for now, as I said, to keep on moving forward with recoloring
the artwork. Tap the next piece of artwork. I forgot to leave out the
cream-white in the background. Reset is the button that you tap if you want to
restore the original colors, then we'll just tap
the little arrow so that I get a dashed
line over there, and I will tap the
next color palettes. That looks really nice. Tap Okay and No. Last one on that row, Recolor Artwork,
Advanced Options, and I don't want to
recolor the background, and then I'll tap
my other palette. That looks pretty cool, and
I will tap Okay and No. Great. Now we have five
different color variations. This already looks really cool. On the bottom row, I will change the
background on these, and let's see what
else we can do. Zoom in on your sixth
piece of artwork. Edit, Edit Colors, Recolor Artwork, Advanced
Options, and for this, I will try to tap the black color and add the
color to the color harmony, and let's see what
happens if I also change the details
of the black color. That instantly gave me
a whole other look. I don't really like
this color combination with the background like that, but it's interesting to
see what happens when I changed the black
color to another color. There are some really interesting color
combinations here. That looks pretty cool actually. That looks pretty nice. I think that I will keep it
like that for the moment, tap Okay and No. On this one, I actually like to keep the black as details, so tap Recolor Artwork, I don't want to change to black, but I want to change
the background. Let's choose the
fifth color palette, try that out and that
looks really cool. Let's leave it like
that, and we will make adjustments
to that later on. If I find a color
combination that I like, but I might want to
change one or two colors, or maybe I just
want to rearrange the color of the objects, then I still keep that combination and I can
adjust the colors later on. This is how I move
quickly with recoloring, I don't think about the
details from start, I just continue to recolor. For this one, let's just
keep the original colors, and we will change the order. That looks pretty cool, and this looks really cool. I will keep that
one and tap Okay. Next one, we will maybe
use this combination. That looks amazing.
I'll keep that one. Now when I zoom out, I can see that it's the
same colors as that one on the top except that it has
this darker brown included. Then I can say do I
want to keep both of them or do I want to
change one of them? Maybe I want to change so
that I have these colors, but I want to change
the order of them and which objects have
different colors, and that way I can
just go in and tap the Randomly change
color order button on the colors that I
already have chosen. I don't like any of these
colors as backgrounds, so I would just go ahead
and tap another one of my color palettes and see if I find
something that I like. Blue background might be fun. I'll keep that one.
For the last one, let's zoom out and
see what we have. We have five with
white backgrounds, two with pinkish backgrounds, one with green, one with blue. Let's see what we can
do for the last one. Maybe we want to use this palette and
that looks pretty cool. Maybe we can change the
colors in that later on, but it looks pretty cool to
have that brown background. Now we have actually
changed all of the colors except
for the first print. We have 10 pieces of artwork
with different colors, and this is the first
step of recoloring. For this part of the process, I just know that I like
something with all of these. I don't need to like
all other details, all of the colors, and that is what we will
do in the next lesson. To go in and adjust some colors that we aren't
perfectly happy with.
6. Adjusting the Colors: The next step in this recoloring
process is to go in and adjust some details that we
might not be so happy with. It's important to keep
this process efficient is to make the first
step pretty quickly, recoloring two
different versions that you find interesting. Then we can go in and see if we find something
that doesn't work. Let's have a look at the
first ones over here. What I want to do
is to just maybe try different variations
and see what I like. For this first one, let's just select that one. Hold down the option key, then Shift and click and
drag to make a copy, so that we have the original to compare with when we make
changes to this one. I'm actually pretty
happy with this one, but I might want to just try out some different variations to see if I like
something else better. I want to keep the
base the same. What I do when I manually go
in and adjust the colors, one way is to double-click the group to isolate the group. That way I can
change color within this group without
affecting other colors. Let me show you what I mean. If I, for example, would like to change
this brown color, I will tap the Brown color, tap Select, Same, Fill Color. Tap Command H to see the
objects that I've chosen. If I zoom out and didn't
isolate this group, I would also select other objects that are
the same fill color. I wouldn't want to change all of the objects that
are the same color. Only the other ones that are
included in this art print. I will tap Command H again so that I can see
what I'm doing, but I still have the
brown color selected. Command H is to hide and
show your selection. Here, I might want to try to use another brown color to make
it a little bit softer. I have a few different here in my other color palettes
that I can choose from. We can just see if something
else works better. The original was this, which looks pretty cool, but I also like this
softer brown look. That actually looks nice. Let's see if I want to change
the color of the berries. Select, Same, Fill Color. Let's choose the
lighter pink color just to have something
to change it to. Because I want to change
the apple to red, and the berries
that I will select, again, to the more
pale like coral color. That looks pretty nice to me. The apple is bright red, the banana is bright pink. And we have the more
softer hues with the peachy corals
and the soft brown. If I double-click and we'll go out of the isolation
group and there I can see which one of these collaborations
that I like the most. For me, I like the
softer one of these two, so I will just delete the older one and keep
the new variation. That way I can go through all of my different colors and see if I want to
change something. Another thing that I can do to change colors is to use
the recolor artwork tools. If I select this
color variation, go to Edit, Edit Colors, and
Recolor Artwork, and here I have my recolor
artwork tool again. If I want to play around
with colors here, I like to do it in
the color wheel. Tap Edit instead of Assign, and here you have a
whole color wheel. If you have your little
chain tapped in here, it means that all of the
colors are linked together, and if you move one color, all of the colors will
move in the wheel. I'll just tap Reset. Because what I want to do is to just change one of the colors. I will tap unlink. Here, I can go ahead
and just change the color of one of the colors. I really like the
purple and the yellow, but I might want to try it out
with a more bluish purple. Let's tap Reset to see how
it looks from the start. Maybe I want to try
with a little bit more blue to see how that looks, and a little bit more pale. I drag in that color to
the middle of the wheel. That looks pretty good
and I will tap Okay. For this one, I forgot
to save the original, but I know that I like
this version more, so I will just keep it. Even though if I have my original well-balanced
color palettes, I might want to go in and change some details of the
color combination. Another way of
changing the colors. For this one, I will
keep an original, so I will just make a
copy of that above. Hold down the Option key, click and drag to make a copy. Then I will select
that Color Variation, Edit, Recolor Artwork. Here I might want to change just the combination
of the colors, which objects are colored
with the different colors. I don't want to change
the background, so I will tap the white to remove the arrow and
just keep a dash there, which means that
that won't change. Then instead of tapping
the color groups, I will just tap randomly
change color order. That will make the colors change randomly within its
own color palette. I'll tap Okay, zoom out. For this one, I
actually don't like the harsh black color here, so I will just delete that
one and keep my original. Tap the line tool and
align it to the artboard. Now we have one, two, three, four that I'm happy with. For the fifth, I might want to go and double-click and see
if I can change the color of, for example, this blue
because I feel that it's really light compared
to the other colors. So tap Select, Same, Fill Color when you
selected the blue hue. Here we have your
full selection. Tap Command H again, and now we can change the
color to something else. Already that looked
more interesting to me. We can also try with yellow, pink, which looked really cool and this peach looked amazing. So let's try out that one. Let's see if we select maybe the apple and made it bluish. Now it went to pastel there. Maybe I want to see if the
banana could change color. I actually like that one. I will try to change the
color of the berries. I think that they
would look pretty good in a brownish color. That's probably the
same color orange. I give beige-brown, or maybe this one. I think that this one looks really nice. I
will keep that one. Double-click to go out
of your group selection. There you have that
color variation. Now, I'm pretty happy with
all of the ones at the top. Let's go ahead and change
the ones in the bottom. For this one, I really
don't like the background, so I will double-click
on that one, select the background
and let's see what sort of background
would look good here. Probably a cream white
would look really good or a beige, but we have so many with
cream white already. Let's go for a beige
background and maybe I don't want the
apple to be black, maybe it should be brownish, and the banana is a
little bit too pale. Here, I'm feeling
that I'm actually losing track of what I want
to do with this piece, and I think it's because the details are brown and
I really don't like that. I will select that
color and tap Select, Same, Fill Color and I will actually change that
to black again. I like that much better. It gives a much better contrast. I like that version. Now, let's go ahead and see what we can do
with this piece. Select the banana
because that color doesn't really work well
with the background, but it can be a little bit more pink and that will be nice. Maybe we can change the
apple to another color, that beige color looks good, or maybe, yeah, the beige color. Then select the
berries. Fill color. That brown color
looks really cool. I'll also go in and
see if I want to change the background
to something else. I can see now that
this version looks really good with
the cream white, so I will just keep the
cream white on this version. I'm really happy
with that one now. Let's use the recolor
artwork tool for this, and see what happens if we just change the
order of the colors. That looks pretty cool. I will tap Okay. Here I have a cream white
background as well. It seems that I really like the cream white
background on this print. I can see now that I'm not
really happy with this print, I will just use the
recolor artwork tool once again to change the whole color
combination of this print. Tap Edit, Recolor,
Recolor Artwork, and here I will just use my color palettes
and see what I can find. I would like to have
a pink background. Let's use that one. Then I will go in and change. The color pink and red
looks great together. Now I lost my way in this
print, but it's okay. I feel pretty happy
with that combination. This combination I like, I said this already. Let's see if I want to do
something with the last one. I will double-click it and maybe change the color of the apple to something else. Yellow looks pretty interesting. We have finished this
process and we have adjusted the colors manually with a few different techniques. Now we actually are finished with recoloring all
of our artwork. Of course, you can spend a bunch of time on this process, but my tip to do this
efficiently is to have your pre-made, well-balanced
color palettes. That will make the whole
process so much easier.
7. Exporting Your Artwork: Okay, so now we're finished
with the recoloring and we will export the artwork so that you
can share it in class. Either way, if you have
used my artwork or used your own artwork for
the class project, I would like you to share a few different color
variations of your artwork. To do that, you can go to
the asset export panel, so Window asset export. Here I will just drag in
all of these pieces of art. I will go to format
settings in the menu type JPG 100 makes sure you have baseline optimized
and art optimized. Make sure you have JPG
100 selected in format. Then I will export my artwork. Tap, choose where
you want to save it. There you have exported your artwork so that you
can share it in class. Here are all of the different color
variations that we have created in this class.
8. Final Thoughts: That's all for this class. Thank you so much for watching. If you liked this class, you can hit the Follow
button by my name to make sure that you don't miss
out on my future classes. If you have any
questions at all, please ask them on the
discussions page here in class, and feel free to
leave a review to let me know if you
enjoyed this class. I would love to
hear your thoughts. Make sure you share
your project here in class and if you post
it on Instagram, feel free to tag me
with maja_faber. Thanks again for watching.
Maja Faber, Surface Pattern Designer
