5.3 Process Color to Spot Color

Hi, my name is Simona, and welcome to tuts+. You are watching the course, Mastering Color in Adobe Illustrator CC, and this is lesson Process Color to Spot Color. In this lesson, we will have a look at the Recolor Artwork panel, and how we can use it to convert our process colors into spot colors. So, let's get started right away. Let's open up Adobe Illustrator CC, and the source file called lesson five part three, in your source file folder. Here is our circus scene again, and we have all of our colors. Now in the graphic design world, the fashion world, and the interior design world, Pantone colors are very important. Since, they give us the ability to match colors across a variety of mediums. Now let's assume the artwork needs to be printed into a t-shirt. In the process, they are using a silkscreen. I already reduced the colors to six colors in the artwork, with the Recolor Artwork panel. Now, usually, when you want to find the right Pantone color for a process, we would maybe open our physical Pantone Swatch book or open the library for the solid-coated Pantones. And then, try to find the right equivalents in the Pantone guide. But to Recolor Artwork panel, can help us to find the proper matching Pantone colors. So, let's select the Artwork, and click the Recolor Artwork panel here. [SOUND] In the pop-up, we see that we are using six colors for our artwork. Now, the t-shirt printing company called us, and said we needed to pick Pantones for those colors. Now, how can we use the tool here to find us the matching Pantone colors, to our process colors used in the artwork? Well, there is a way. See these icons down here, where it says None? When we click, we get the library's menu, and there we can choose any library to limit the artwork to a color group, or Pantone color group, if we choose so. So, let's select the Pantone Solid Coded library. We can find it under Color Books, and then Pantone plus Solid Coded. Now, when we select it, see what happened up here? Illustrator found the closest Pantones to our artwork. Let's go to the color wheel. Usually, we see smooth colors. The HSB spectrum. But since, we chose to limit our artwork to Pantones Solid Coded, we stripped out the colors in the HSB spectrum that cannot be printed with Pantones. Now, let's save if the Pantone group as a color group in our Swatches panel. I will it circus t-shirt pantones, since I already have a color group called circus t-shirts in here. Now, when we click OK, and then have a look at our artwork, we can see that now our artwork has been recolored in Pantone colors only. Now, when we check our separations, we have the Print dialog box. Let me open it up. I can see the separations when we switch to print PDF, and the color mode to Separations. We can see that now our artwork has only Pantone colors applied. And this is it, for this lesson. We can do so much more with the Recolor Artwork panel, and the sky is the limit. Have fun. Try color themes out. And make your art as colorful as you want. Now, let's wrap this course up in our conclusion