Home
Username:
Password:
Adobe Illustrator CS4 Tutorials

Color / Live Color




Visitors to VTC.com will be able to view all introductory videos for each training course.
Free Trial Members will gain access to first three chapters for each training course.
Full Access Members have full access to VTC.com’s entire library of video tutorials.


Learn More

Subtitles of the Movie

Live Color is an amazing tool that will help you to create color harmonies so that you can experiment with different combinations. What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you something first of all. If we look up in our Control Panel, you don't see the icon that allows you to first of all use the Live Color option. So what I'm going to do is grab this group and then this little icon appears. It's called Recolor Artwork. When I click on it, it opens up the Recolor Artwork Dialog. I'm actually going to cancel this and move over just so we can have our colors and that panel open at the same time. What I see here at the top is the color group in the selected artwork. These are the active colors that I've used. What I'm going to do now is take this group and add it over here in my color groups list by clicking on this little Plus Sign. I can double click on this to rename it if I want to. I'll call it Blocks. And now I have my own group. I can twirl it open to see the colors that I've used in this document. If I want to experiment with these colors, I'll go over to where it says Edit. This color wheel shows me the colors that I've used in this particular artwork and what I can do is I can move these guys around to change that color that corresponds to it. So this is the orange color and this is the blue. It's turning purple. But if I don't want to just move one of these guys at a time, I can enable the lot of these guys so that they will all remain in harmony with one another. I click this icon right here to do so. Now the harmony is linked. I can click on any one of these guys and move it and when I let go, notice how all the colors change because the harmonies stay connected and these colors will all go well with one another. If I'm happy with this, I can click here and I have a new Blocks harmony wheel and it colors associated with it. I can twirl it down and see those colors. I'm going to unlock this now and I'm going to add some more colors to this by clicking on this little icon and clicking right here. Now we have a brand-new circle. So you can add more colors and delete them by clicking on this guy and clicking on one of these little guys here to get rid of it. And we'll get rid of it in your document as well. I can also choose to look at my wheel in a segmented color wheel or as color bars. So I have a couple of options available to me. I can also work with the saturation and the brightness with the slider and this little button here. So this is a great way to experiment and explore color, to come up with things that will look good for a logo, for example. So if your company is changing its look but you want to keep the same logo and you just want to show more vibrant or exciting colors or even scale the colors down, keep those colors, make a group and just use the harmony wheel with it locked to mov it around to find something that will give you a new look to your logo. And that's how you can use the Recolor Artwork to create some live colors inside of your artwork.

Tutorial Information

Course: Adobe Illustrator CS4
Author: Dwayne Ferguson
SKU: 33974
ISBN: 1-935320-35-1
Release Date: 2009-03-12
Duration: 7.5 hrs / 119 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: Available on CD and Online University
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

VTC Sign up & Benefits

  • Unlimited Access
  • 98,729 Video Tutorials (23,265 free)
  • Video Available as Flash or QuickTime
  • Over 1026 Courses
  • $30 for One Month Access
  • Multi-User Discounts Available