Trace with a specific set of 5 colors not 30

[Sarah Northway]

I'm converting a full color image to a vector with exactly 5 colors (black white blue yellow brown) for embroidery. The "Automatic" Palette keeps picking 2 blues and ignoring the yellow, so I created a custom swatch group with the 5 colors I want, added it to my library, chose "Document Library" as the Palette and my group as the Colors.

The result has WAY MORE than 5 colors in it. At the bottom of the Image Trace box it says 30 colors. How do I force it to use ONLY the exact 5 colors in my palette, and not blend or riff off them or whatever it's doing?

Screenshot (this is only a test):

[Doug A Roberts · Accepted solution]

I believe this is a bug introduced in v2020. I don't use trace much so hadn't noticed, but there are posts describing it and several uservoice requests:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/live-trace-gt-library-colors-not-working/m-p/...

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/42793721-image-...

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/41102683-image-...

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/42945078-live-t...

You can still use a palette from an open swatch library -- so you could as a workaround save your document library as a swatch library, open that and use in Image Trace.

[Sarah Northway]

Swatches worked - thank you! I upvoted the uservoice requests but am guessing two years they aren't planning to fix it. The Image Trace tool is the only reason I use Illustrator. It could really use a full overhaul with a lot more fine tuned (and less buggy) options.