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!

InDesign "hiding" in Mac OS X fixed!

Adobe has confirmed that the frustrating issue of InDesign not being able to be hidden (or not being able to come back after it was hidden successfully without a painful Force Quit) no longer exists when running under the latest release of Apple’s OS, Leopard 10.5.6.

Read the full report here (via InDesign Secrets)

Crop This: More Useful Trim Marks in Illustrator

A while back, I posted a few scripts from Shane Stanley, which added some important functionality to the multiple artboards feature in Illustrator.

Most folks are also familiar with the fact that multiple artboards were once called "crop areas" back in Illustrator CS3. But there's also another feature in Illustrator that helps you define cropping areas, with drawn objects. In previous versions of Illustrator, this command, Create Trim Marks, was found in the Filter menu.

But alas, in Illustrator CS4, the Filter menu has been removed altogether, and the Trim Marks function was moved into the Effect menu. As such, the command is now a live effect, and must be expanded if you want to edit the marks that are drawn.

But let's be honest here -- the trim marks that Illustrator have always created aren't very useful. They are large, and they are offset quite a ways off from the selected artwork that is used to define them. Chances are, if you've used the Create Trim Marks feature before, you've also manually adjusted them afterwards.

I asked Shane if he thought it would be difficult to add some functionality to his already-wonderful Artboard Coordinates script to also have it create custom trim marks. His response came in the form of an email that read: "you mean like this?" and there was a script attached :)

And so now, I pass on the golden prize to you -- a script that not only takes multiple artboards to a new level, but that also creates customized trim marks. All you need to do is select an object and click on the Trim Marks button and a dialog box appears asking you for the desired length, offset, and weight of the strokes, and even offers an option to create dashed lines to indicate folds. You can also choose to place the marks on a specific layer.

Download the script here, and don't forget to thank Shane. Please note: This is an AppleScript, and as such, is a Mac-only application.

P.S. I wrote this post using some new blogging software that I was introduced to, called blogo. I've tried a few editors in the past and haven't come across one that I've really liked, but this one seems pretty cool so far. Hopefully it will mean I'll be blogging more often without the hassle. If you do blog on your own, you should check it out.

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!