- I want to introduce you to two
of my favorite digital, color-based tools.
Illustrator's Color Guide and the Color Picker
that shows up in both Illustrator and Photoshop.
Both of these tools help me do
my color work faster and better.
This applies when I'm choosing individual colors,
and when I'm assembling entire palettes,
and also when I'm making modifications to color schemes.
Let's start with Illustrator's Color Guide.
I'll begin by adding a bright orange
straight from the Swatches panel to my graphic.
Next, I'll head up to the Window menu
and open the Color Guide which comes up
with the orange already loaded at top left.
Then I'll use the Color Guide's pull-down menu
and ask the Color Guide to open
the monochromatic two relatives of the orange.
Our current color is now at the center of the top row.
Darker, lighter, and more muted versions are on either side.
A bunch of darker, lighter, brighter and duller versions
of the color are elsewhere on the grid.
While I still have the orange element
of my graphic selected,
I'll go ahead and lighten it slightly
by clicking the next lighter version of the color
in the top row of the grid.
Next, I'll click on other gray elements
within my illustration, and then ask Illustrator
to select all pieces with the same gray
by using the Select, Same, Fill Color
and Select, Same, Stroke Color commands.
Then I'll color these elements by choosing
various oranges from the Color Guide,
oranges that are similar in value
to the grays that I'm replacing.
I'm going to repeat this process over and over
with several grays as I begin adding colors to my image.
You'll notice that I'm going with dull oranges
and browns as I work here.
That's because I've decided that I want
the first orange that I used to remain
the brightest color in my overall palette.
There, that's good for the oranges.
Now I'm going to add a green from the Swatches panel.
You'll notice how the Color Guide has repopulated itself
with versions of that green.
Now I'll continue working just as I was before,
by selecting the remaining gray areas
of the illustration and converting them to colors
that I borrow from the Color Guide.
There, done.
I could go on and on about the Color Guide,
but I encourage you to thoroughly check out the rest
of this amazing panels, drop-down menus and options.
Trust me, you're going to love this thing.
Let's take a look at the Color Picker panel.
First, let me replace our backdrop color
with a teal that I've added to the Swatches panel.
It's not the exact shade that I want,
but that's where the Color Picker
is going to come in handy.
I'll open the Color Picker by double-clicking
on the teal at the top of the Swatches panel.
We'll focus here on the panel's
large area of gradated color.
And also on the multicolored slider in the middle.
Look close and you'll see a little black circle
within the gradated area; that's our current color.
Click elsewhere in this space, and the color changes.
See the upper rectangle to the right of the color bar?
That's our new color; below it is the color we started with.
If you move toward the left in the gradated area,
you'll get muted versions.
Move right, the color gets more intense.
Go up, lighter; down, darker.
Let's go with this muted version.
By the way, I could have completely changed the teal
to another color by moving this color bar slider up or down.
How about a light, plum-violet?
Sure, that looks good.
But I think I'm going to go back to the teal in this case.
See why I like these two digital color tools so much?
They're easy and they're powerful
and I strongly encourage you to open them up
in Illustrator and give them a good tryout.
You're going to learn a bunch of things
that will come in handy for an upcoming layout
or an illustration of your own.