ASK MORDY: Eyedropper Tool Woes

This question comes in from Dan:

If I have a white rectangle with some transparency applied and it sitting directly over another rectangle with a red fill, what you end up seeing where they overlap is not red, not white but pink. Not rocket science....I know. However if I want to use the eyedropper to pick up that pink color....I cannot do it. I've been researching and fiddling with eyedropper settings but no matter what I do, eyedropper only picks up "white"; it sees the objects, not the color. If I take a screen shot of Illustrator and place that flattened 2-dimensional image back into Illustrator, now eyedropper "sees" the pink and picks it up if I shift-click. How do you make eyedropper pick up the resulting pixel color....not the fill color when you're dealing with transparencies? 

That's a great question, Dan. Just to illustrate the "issue" here, say you have two shapes -- a yellow and a blue rectangle -- that overlap. The blue shape is set to multiply, so where the two shapes overlap, you see green. If you use the Eyedropper tool to sample the area that "looks" green, you'll actually pick up blue. That's because the Eyedropper tool is picking up the fill attribute of the rectangle -- not the final color that's a result of the transparent effect. 

Sampling from the "green" area will actually result in a blue color.

Summer's over - ready for Spring?

Every professions has its seasons -- and I've always enjoyed the paradox that exists in the world of apparel design and fashion -- when it's cold and snowy out, you're designing the summer fashions, and vice versa. So now that Summer has officially ended, it's only normal to start thinking about spring...

Today, Pantone published their Fashion Color Report for Spring 2010. Click on the image below to download a copy of it.



I was particularly pleased to see that this year, Aurora (a derivative of my favorite color, yellow) made the top 10 list. Here are the words right from Pantone: "Reminiscent of the first glimpse of yellow as the sun begins to rise over the horizon, this shimmering, slightly greenish yellow adds a bold infusion."
Also making the list were Pink Champagne, Tomato Puree, and Eucalyptus. Now it's time to throw a few of these colors at Kuler and see what you can come up with!

Say what? You don't have an Illustrator swatch library for the Pantone Textile Library? You mean you actually look for a color in your Textile book and then try to manually create a new swatch and match it on screen? Are you mad? Run -- don't walk -- to the Adobe Illustrator Exchange and download the Pantone Textile Library today!

Learn to recolor your artwork

With Illustrator CS3, Adobe added a TON of functionality around the use of color. Initially referred to as "Live Color", these features included the ability to get inspired around the use of color (the Color Guide panel, Adobe Kuler integration, etc.), and the ability to change or edit colors (Recolor Artwork, etc.).

With Illustrator CS4, Adobe enhanced some of these features to make them a bit easier to use and understand (more consistent terminology, contextual menu support, etc.). Most importantly, in my opinion anyway, Adobe dropped the "Live Color" marketing term and clearly identifies features in the program (for example, the Recolor Artwork feature opens a dialog called Recolor Artwork instead of Live Color).

Admittedly, the Recolor Artwork dialog features a plethora of settings - which gives you an idea of just how powerful the feature actually is - but it can be hard to figure out how to use it to do just what you want (or need) it to do. Hopefully, I can help you out with that...



I wrote an article for iStockPhoto called Recoloring Artwork, where I take you step-by-step through the process of changing specific colors in a piece of artwork. The article shows how to change the color of a woman's hair and eyes -- even though the colors are employed inside of gradients. Along the way, you'll learn how to better organize the colors in your document, as well as learn how to take advantage of the power found in the Recolor Artwork dialog. An added bonus is a quick way to instantly convert color artwork to grayscale in Illustrator. Enjoy!

CMYK + RGB: Can't We All Just Get Along?

There are plenty of articles out there that discuss CMYK and RGB in general. At this point, I'm assuming you already know what the differences are between them, and you also know when to use each one. The point of this article though, is what happens when you end up working with both in Illustrator.



In the days of Illustrator 8, one was able to combine both RGB and CMYK artwork within the same document. Many printers took issue with this as they would often receive RGB artwork (containing bright and vibrant colors), but when they delivered the print job, the client would complain that the colors shifted, as we know happens with the lower-gamut CMYK colorspace. The bigger issue was that it was possible to have colors within a single document across the two colorspaces, causing odd shifts of color on the same page.

When Illustrator 9 came out, Adobe implemented a new behavior, that matched Photoshop's model: all documents can be EITHER defined in the CMYK or the RGB colorspace, but a single document couldn't contain artwork from BOTH colorspaces. The one exception to this rule is obviously placed-linked content. One could still place an RGB image into a CMYK document, as the image is just a link. However, as soon as you would embed the image, the image would be converted to CMYK to match the document.

In fact, Illustrator does that across the board. If you have two files open on your screen - one RGB and one CMYK - and you copy some art from the RGB file and paste it into the CMYK file, as soon as you paste the art into the CMYK document, Illustrator converts the RGB colors to CMYK colors.

Just about everyone knows that when you create a new document, you can choose RGB or CMYK at the start. Most also know that at any time, you can choose File > Document Color Mode and CHANGE your document from one color space to another (this is akin to choosing Image > Mode in Photoshop). And you might do so when you get an RGB file (for example, from a client, from a file that you've used to create some web graphic, or from a stock photo house, like iStockPhoto for example). You might think that you need the art for print and so changing the document color mode to CMYK will make everything peachy. Well, maybe not. As we always do here at the Real World Illustrator blog, let's take a closer look...

When you launch Illustrator, and no documents are open, you'll notice that the panels are empty. There are no colors in the Swatches panel, no symbols, no brushes, etc.



When you create a new document - in this case, an RGB document, as I'll use the Web profile - the panels are suddenly populated with content. Lovely color, symbols, etc. Where does all of that content come from? The answer is: from the NDP (New Document Profile) that you chose when you created the file. So in this case, it all came from the RGB-based Web NDP.



It's essential to understand this because of this all important fact: In Illustrator, the DOCUMENT is limited to a single color space, but the PANELS are not. A single panel in Illustrator can contain both CMYK and RGB content. For example, there's nothing preventing you from opening a new CMYK document, but then defining a new RGB swatch in that document. Each time you apply that swatch to an object on your artboard, Illustrator will automatically convert that object to CMYK. In other words, you'll get an RGB to CMYK color conversion.

It's easy to see this for yourself: just create a new CMYK document, and then create a new swatch. Set its color mode to RGB and set its value to 0,0,0 (black) and then apply that color to any object in your document. If you take a look at the color panel, you'll see that object's CMYK values aren't 100k -- they are a mix of CMYK percentages that would make any printer go mad (the exact values will differ depending on your color management settings).

In addition, color swatches themselves can only define a swatch using ONE color mode. You can't have a single swatch that contains 2 definitions (for example, 100k in CMYK and 0,0,0 in RGB). In fact, there's only one kind of swatch that exists in Illustrator today that can contain 2 color definitions, and that's a Book Color. Book Colors contain both CMYK and LAB color definitions and serve up the one you need based on your settings (see this article for more details).

So now let's put these two all-important facts together: New documents get their default swatches from a specific NDP, which you choose when you first create your file. In addition, while documents are restricted to a single colorspace, panels (and the content within them) are not restricted at all. So what happens when you start with an RGB document and you then choose File > Document Color Mode to change it to CMYK? The ARTBOARD changes to CMYK, but all of the CONTENT in your document's panels (Swatches, Symbols, Brushes, etc.) are still RGB. Those haven't changed at all. Which means as you continue working, each time you apply a color from a swatch, you're getting an RGB to CMYK conversion with all those messy values.



So what do you do? Well, there's the hard way, and the easy way. Naturally, I prefer the easy way - which is to simply avoid converting the document color space entirely. If you have artwork that was created in an RGB document and you need to repurpose it for print, copy and paste the content into a new CMYK file. In that way, all the content in your new CMYK document will be CMYK. Alternatively, there's the hard way - which is to delete all of your swatches and symbols in your existing RGB file, and to load the CMYK ones. You can do this by choosing Window > Swatch Libraries > Default Swatches, and opening your CMYK library of choice.

At the end of the day, I'm hoping that at some point, Illustrator will allow us to create "smart swatches" like Book Color swatches, which would allow us to define a single color both in CMYK and RGB breakdowns. Then, depending on what color mode we choose, Illustrator just serves up the right one. In this way, colors would never go through color conversions, and we'd have much more control over how our art can be repurposed for different needs. In theory, such a capability would allow us to create artwork that would internally know how to adjust itself for both print and web workflows. Until then, we have to struggle with these nagging issues.

Kuler Essential Training now live at Lynda.com

Many of you are already familiar with Kuler - Adobe's online color community. Over the past few months, Adobe has added more and more functionality to Kuler, including the ability to extract color themes from photographs (your own or even from Flickr). In fact, there's a whole lot going on in Kuler, which prompted me to sit down and record a video title that covers its functionality both within the website as well as other ways you can access it (like from within Adobe applications or even with Widgets and AIR applications).



If you're already a Lynda.com subscriber, you can view the video title here. If you aren't a subscriber, you can get a free 7-day trial by clicking here.

Enjoy!

TUTORIAL: Recoloring Artwork

One of the more powerful features to have been introduced to Illustrator as of late is the Recolor Artwork feature. When it was introduced in CS3, it was called "Live Color" but thankfully, Adobe dropped that name and now officially refer to it by its more descriptive name: Recolor Artwork. Granted, the feature itself is incredibly complex, but that's because it just does so much, You can't really demo it unless you have a specific task you're looking to accomplish.

On the User to User Forum, someone asked specifically how to accomplish a task, which was really a perfect example for showing one specific part of the Recolor Artwork feature. So I recorded a quick little movie, which I think can help people get a better idea of what the feature does and how to use it -- at least for this one specific task.

Because the Recolor Artwork feature works only on selected artwork, I also added a bit on defining a custom action to help automate the process of unlocking and selecting the art.


Recoloring Artwork in Illustrator CS4 from Mordy Golding on Vimeo.

What the video doesn't show is how to re-lock all of the art once the color edits have been made. To address that you'd actually choose View > New View when you first open the document. Then, after you've completed the color edit, simply choose View > New View 1 (or whatever you've named your view).

As an aside, this tutorial will work in CS3 as well.

Enjoy!

Finger on the Pulse: Color Analysis comes to Adobe Kuler

I've always said that one of the most exciting things about Adobe's online color community, Kuler, was that it was built as an RIA -- a Rich Internet Application. Sure, if you look at kuler as simply a way to generate a quick color theme here or there, it works great. But that doesn't tap into the power that the internet brings to the table.

A while back, Adobe update kuler to enable you to extract color themes from photographs. You could either upload your own, or you could extract inspiration from images from Flickr. That stuff was nice, but now, Adobe has started to add the "real stuff" -- a new feature called "Community Pulse" has now been added to kuler, in Beta form. If you log into kuler, you'll find Pulse between the Community and Links buttons along the left side of the screen.



So what is Community Pulse? It's a visual analysis tool that allows you to view color usage. You can almost think of it as Google Analytics for Color. Community Pulse can tell you what colors are popular, where they are popular, and when they are popular. It can also be used to compare color usage across the globe. For example, in the screenshot above, I've asked Community Pulse to display the differences in color usage between the USA and Japan. Specifically, I asked it to show me results of colors tagged with the word "hot", and from the looks of it, it's seems apparent that designers in the US consider blue to be hot.

As Community Pulse is in beta, there aren't as many options available to search on yet, but I'm hoping that eventually, we'll be able to search with our own custom tags and date ranges, etc. I'll be honest, when I first started playing with this cool feature, I was expecting to see a whole lot more green being used, what with the whole global environmental and "green" mindset thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

I wonder what other people will be able to extract from this incredibly helpful tool -- play around with Community Pulse yourself and let me know what your own data analysis reveals!

Go Goe Pantone

The color folks over at Pantone have recently been in the news, as they have merged with X-Rite. But they apparently aren't stopping there as today, Pantone has announced a complete new product line of... colors.

The PANTONE GOE System (pronounced "GO") is a brand new set of colors -- 2058 of them to be exact -- which are organized in an entirely new way. Unlike the previous PMS system, GOE colors are organized chromatically, according to the color wheel. An entirely new numbering system is also in place, which is supposed to be more intuitive. For example, if you divide a color wheel into 165 slices (like ticks on a clock), you'd quickly be able to identify a color by seeing its number. Colors are now numbered and organized in a more intuitive fashion as well.



Previously, each page on your Pantone guide had 7 color swatches on it. The full strength color was in the middle, and there were 3 lighter colors shown above it and 3 darker colors shown beneath it (lighter colors are achieved by adding white ink and darker colors are achieved by adding black ink). The GOE system still lists each page with 7 colors, but the color at the bottom is the full strength color (with no black added) and above it are 6 lighter versions of the color (using white). According to this logic, the colors are now named as follows:

70-2-3 C

This translates to 70 (the slice of color, or the hue, which is blue), 2, which is the 2nd page in the book of blues, and 3, which is the 3rd color that appears from the top of that page. The C stands for Coated, as it did before.

Whether you buy into this new numbering system or not, I know my brain will still scream 187 when I see a deep red color. Which brings me to an important point -- Pantone claims that the GOE system does NOT replace the existing PMS system. So both will exist. Obviously, Pantone wants people to use the GOE system (a full kit with a totally cool museum-quality display case retails for $499), but the PMS system isn't going away.



I guess this means more confusion for those in the Print industry. The PMS system relied on 13 different inks and the new system actually uses less colors -- 10 inks -- while producing nearly 1000 more colors. But printers will still need to stock inks from both systems (there is an overlap, so you don't have to stock 23 colors).

As if the colors itself weren't enough, Pantone has also included software with the GOE system (we are, after all, living in the year 2007). The software (which runs as a Widget or a Gadget) allows you to compile a library of colors, which is similar in concept to kuler -- although the similarities end there. Pantone may know a heck of a lot about color, but they are a bit behind when it comes to designing a computer application. myPantone, as the software is called, is pretty smart, as it even knows if your monitor is calibrated. You can use color pickers, color wheels, and even pick complementary colors to find your desired Pantone colors. However, the user interface for myPantone leaves much to be desired. While it's entirely possible that I've seen a beta version and that the user interface will be cleaned up before it ships, I am less than impressed with the implementation of the software -- especially considering that I can pick libraries of Pantone colors using kuler and Illustrator.



One cool feature that myPantone does offer is the ability to build palettes of colors directly from a photograph. While this can be done with a few clicks using Illustrator's Live Trace and Live Color features, the process is faster in myPantone. In addition, there are plenty of people out there who don't use Illustrator (shame on them). If Pantone puts some effort into designing myPantone into something usable, I think it would be a great addition to the software I use. Even better, I'd rather see Pantone license their matching technology that runs behind myPantone. That way, Adobe or any other company could simply tap into an API that most designers are already familiar with.



There are other parts of the GOE system (like a better "chip" system which uses reusable "sticky note" chips instead), and you can either purchase these items individually, or as an entire kit.

Overall, the new GOE system is pretty cool. Like most things in life, it will take some getting used to. I may install a picture window and professional lighting just to show off the cool GOE package. The price is a bit hefty though, so I don't see individual designers being able to fork over the cash just yet -- although larger studios should probably consider GOE just for all of the new colors alone. I have no idea when Adobe apps will have the new GOE libraries included (I will assume CS4), although we may see libraries that we can download before then. Pantone has assured me that they are actively working with all of their partners to help bring GOE to the masses.

Feel free to comment and add your own feelings or views about this new offering from Pantone.

Real World Illustrator CS3 Now Shipping!

I just received my own copy today!

The CS3 version of the book contains many improvements based on suggestions by the readers of this blog. Thanks to all of my readers, both of the blog and the book -- I really appreciate your support.

Once again, Ron Chan has done a superb job of creating the illustration for the cover of the book, and Ron has captured the true focus of the CS3 release, which obviously was all about color.



Besides covering all of the new features in detail, the CS3 edition of the book contains an all-new chapter called Working with Color which covers every aspect of the complex Live Color feature in detail. The book also contains a 16-page color insert which breaks down every color feature in Illustrator (as well as kuler) -- and I'm in the process of trying to convince my publisher to allow me to turn that into a full-color poster as well.

Now that the book is out, the videos are out (and the SAMS Teach Yourself Adobe Creative Suite 3 All in One book is going through final PDF proofs as we speak), I can once again focus my efforts back on updating this blog more regularly (I hope). Maybe I can even get a few video podcasts out there :)

In addition, I have a couple of things I've been working on, which I hope to share with you as well in the near future.

As always, if you have ordered the book and have any comments, questions, or corrections, don't hesitate to drop me an email and let me know! And don't be shy about adding your reviews to Amazon either :)

Enjoy the book!