How to colour shift multiple vector objects in Illustrator for elearning graphics
We’ve previously discussed colouring graphics using the Live Paint tool in Illustrator for your stock vector graphics. But what if you want to change the colours in a complex design with lots of parts? Here are some tools to help streamline this process.
Select Same – Fill
If your graphic contains lots of parts that are the same colour and you’d like to change all those pieces to a different colour, select a part of your graphic with that fill. Then, select Select from the menu, Same from the dropdown, and Appearance or Fill from the Same dropdown.
This will select all vector shapes in your graphic with the same characteristics as the one you selected. Now you can instantly replace the fill colour for all the objects that had the same fill.
Recolour Artwork
If you want to change all the colours in your graphic at the same time, you can also use the Recolor Artwork function in the Edit menu. First, select everything in your graphic. Then, select Edit > Edit Colours > Recolour Artwork. Selecting this will give you a popup window. In the popup, you will see two tabs below a colour bar with all the colours in your graphic on it – Edit and Assign.
The tool defaults to showing Assign, where if you select one of the colours in the Current Colours pane, you can change all objects sharing that colour to another one of your choice, similar to Select Same Fill.
If you select Edit, it will show a colour wheel with all your colours mapped on it. This has a useful feature Link Harmony Colours, which will link the relationships of each of the colours in your graphic so that when you change one, every other colour will change accordingly. The button is in the bottom right of the pane.
Then, you can drag any of the circles to colour shift all the colours in your graphic. Also, if you select one of the circles, you can enter RGB values in the bottom left to change it to a specific colour. This is especially helpful if you need to change your graphics to be the correct branded colours for a client with a strong brand identity.
For more on working with vector graphics for elearning, check out our other articles on using Adobe Illustrator, or contact us at info@pathwaysinc.ca today to talk to one of our graphic designers!
