- [Deke] In this movie, I'll introduce you

to the recolor artwork command,

starting with this guy in the top left corner.

I'll go ahead and select his eyes by clicking on one,

and shift-clicking on the other,

and then I'll press control plus or command plus on the Mac

in order to zoom in on him,

and I'll move him over as well.

Now, let's say I want to change these eyes from red to blue.

Well, that could end up being

a pretty complicated proposition because if I go up

to the window menu and choose the appearance command

to bring up the appearance panel, you can see

that we have a total of two fills and a stroke.

And the fill is a white to transparent gradient,

as you can see right here.

And so notice if I turn that fill off,

we lose the highlights in the eyes.

If I turn it on, they come back.

Subject to a couple of dynamic effects.

The stroke by the way, also has its own dynamic effect.

But the most complicated item is this radial gradient fill,

which goes from red one at the outside to red two,

and then red three in the middle.

And so if I wanted to modify so much as the color

of the eyes, it would typically take a lot of work

to finding new swatches and adjusting the colors

inside the gradients panel.

But thanks to recolor artwork,

this is a very easy proposition.

And you get to the command in one of two ways.

The simplest is to click on this Recolor Artwork icon

up here in the control panel.

However, depending what you have selected,

this icon can move around on screen.

And so if you can't find it, go to the edit menu,

choose edit colors, and choose this very first command

recolor artwork, which is going to bring up

this color wheel right here.

Now, for the time being, that's not what we want.

And so to more easily switch out the colors,

click on this button in the bottom right corner,

advanced options, which is going to switch you

to this dialog box right here.

And so notice over here on the right side of the dialog box,

we're seeing a handful of colors,

but those only include the colors that are arranged

inside color groups.

That's not what I want.

So I'll go ahead and click this left pointing arrowhead

on the right side of the dialog box in order

to hide those options, which will give us

a little more room to work.

And then I'll drag this dialog box over.

And so notice that we have a handful of color sliders

right here, including white.

Now, by default, white is locked down.

And to see what I mean by that, I'll go ahead and click

on this little dialog box icon

to bring up the color reduction options dialog box.

And notice these preserved check boxes right here,

white and black are turned on by default.

For good reason, by the way, because after all,

we want to maintain the page white, as well as any white areas

in case you're creating a web or device graphic.

Also, we want to maintain the highlights.

And so that is generally a good way to work.

The blacks are also locked down again by default,

we don't have any blacks inside this selection.

However, if we did have black texts, for example,

we would want to keep that text black.

And so I'm going to stick with the defaults

by just clicking the cancel button.

And you can see that white is locked down

because it has this little line icon right here.

Whereas all the other colors include arrows.

And so the idea is the original colors appear here

on the left, and the new colors appear on the right.

And so let's say I wanted to switch out this dark red,

then I'd go ahead and double click on this icon right here,

that tiny new icon that is.

And I could dial in my own custom color values,

or I could select from my existing color swatches

by clicking on this button right here,

at which point I can see all of my color swatches,

whether they're arranged into groups or not.

And so let's say I selected green right here.

I'm not going to see the change until I click Okay,

at which point I am going to preview that change on screen,

assuming that the recolor art checkbox is turned on.

And by the way, even though we're not seeing

the selection edges, these eyes are selected.

It's just that Illustrator goes ahead

and hides them automatically so we can better see

what we're doing.

I want to make these eyes blue, however,

and so notice these HSB values down here.

If you're not seeing them,

click on this little flyout menu icon and choose HSB.

And so I'm going to start off by changing the hue value

to 240 degrees.

A saturation of a hundred percent is just fine.

And now I'll change the brightness value to 40%

at which point you'll see those colors update on screen.

Now also, like the second color,

doesn't matter how you click on it.

And I'll once again change the hue value to 240 degrees,

a saturation of a hundred percent, and a brightness value

of 60% are just fine.

I'll go ahead and click on the third color,

and I'll change it to 240 degrees as well.

And I'll accept saturation and brightness values

of a hundred percent.

Now, let's say that's not the shade of blue I'm looking for.

I'll click on that hue value and I'll press shift down arrow

a total of three times.

Notice that we're not seeing any change on screen

until I press the tab key at which point that color updates.

And I think yellow looks great for the highlight,

but let's say you want to change it,

then just go ahead and click on that yellow bar.

And this time around, I'll just change the hue value

to zero degrees for red.

Now, if you're working along with me,

there's one more change I want you to make.

And that's to turn on this open advanced

recolor artwork dialogue on launch

so that we always have access to these very useful options.

All right, now let's say you want to save these new colors

as a group.

Then go ahead and click on that right pointing arrowhead

in order to show those additional options.

And I'll go ahead and name this group "blue eyes,"

let's say.

And then after you enter a name, you want to click

on this little folder icon to create a new group.

Now, notice that it includes white.

I don't really want that, but for now,

I'm just going to click Okay in order to apply my changes.

Then I'll click off the eyes to de-select them.

And here inside the swatches panel, I'll go ahead

and select white inside that new blue eyes group,

and I'll press the alt key or the option key on the Mac,

and click on the trashcan icon to get rid

of it without seeing an alert message.

And that's how you modify the colors of even complex objects

with multiple gradient fills and strokes complete

with dynamic effects using the recolor artwork command

here inside Illustrator.

(gentle music)