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Adobe Illustrator Essentials Guide: Recolor Artwork

Recolor Artwork

  • To access the ‘Recolor Artwork’ dialog box select ‘Recolor’ in the ‘Properties’ panel to the right.

Adobe Illustrator Properties panel with "Recolor" button circled in red

  • The dialog box will have all the colors in your document and will recommend a color palette based on the color selected.

  • Below are color palettes based on the custom maroon color selected

Dropdown with color palette options

Color Wheel

  • Recoloring your graphic is a useful tool to know when you want to try different color palette, change the hue, or make the entire image lighter or darker.

    1. Select the artwork to recolor.

    2. Click the ‘Recolor’ button in the ‘Properties Panel’ to the right, to open the ‘Recolor Artwork’ dialog box.

    3. Select the ‘Edit’ tab to view colors in the selected artwork in a color wheel.

      • On the color wheel is colors the program picked up from the selected artwork.

    4. Drag individual colors in the color wheel to edit them.Color wheel editor with arrows pointing towards the eyedropper, the harmony colors linker, and the color-editor slider
    5. Click the ‘Eyedropper’ to get the original colors from the artwork again, if needed.

    6. Click the ‘Link Harmony Colors’ button to edit all of the colors together. Drag individual colors in the color wheel to edit the colors together.

    7. Click ‘OK’ to change the color for the selected artwork.

  • Instead of editing the colors separately, the ‘Recolor Artwork’ feature gives you a powerful way to edit a series of colors quickly and visually.

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