Trial Version Features?

[Cicindelidae]

I have a question regarding what's available in the free trial version of Ai--

Is it essentially the same as the full version, or is it limited?

I need to recolor an image from RGB to Pantone colors for work, and a few web pages said it could be done through Ai. We downloaded the trial version to see if it would suit our needs, but a lot of the color options (including recolor) are grayed out. Is this because that simply can't be used with that image, or is it because it's the trial version?

Both my workplace and I are hesitant to buy something before we can test it out. Paint.net and GIMP suit most of my needs, so I'd hate to dump money and hard drive space on something, only to find out it isn't going to work anyways.

[Jon Fritz]

It's the full program.

The main reason menu options would be grayed out is if, for whatever reason, the artwork doesn't fit the parameters for those options to be active. Basically, AI knows whether or not it can operate a given function based on the art opened. If it can't, the options won't be available until the art is modified in a way that will activate them.

Other options won't activate until "something" within the art is selected. Simply opening a file and then trying to get certain functions to fire won't work. You'd need to click on something, a point, segment, object, layer, etc before the options activate.

[Cicindelidae]

Okay, do you know how I would go about trying to change the image to make it fit the parameters?

I tried opening several different images with it, and had the same problems with each one.

[Jon Fritz]

What file types are you trying to change?

The majority of AIs functionality won't turn on unless/until you're working with vector art.

[Test Screen Name]

The trial has all features, but isn't for doing a quick actual job. It isn't for commercial use. You can take a one month subscription for that.

AI is NOTHING like gimp. Adobe's editor for images is Photoshop. However, you can't just recolour an image to spot colour. Do you want a spot colour (tricky) or something from the Pantone process guide?

[Cicindelidae]

Perhaps I should rephrase--we weren't downloading the software for a quick job. We were looking at it to see if it would suit our needs before buying it. There would be no point in buying it for commercial or even hobby use, if it didn't actually do what I needed it to do, so we were trying the trial first.

GIMP and Paint.net may be very different from Ai or Ps, but it doesn't change the fact that those are really all I've needed until now. Anything graphics related is a very new area for both me and anyone in my workplace. I started working here quite recently and only ended up stumbling into graphics because something came up. I figured making a graphic would be an easy solution to our problem. I happened to be here and have a small amount of hobby experience with GIMP and Paint.net and of course now I'm suddenly I'm doing a LOT a graphics work very unexpectedly, now that people know it's an option, and have apparently now become the resident graphics stuff person. I've really only had experience with GIMP and Paint.net in the past, because when Ps costs hundreds of dollars and when free software easily does what you need it to do, it's not really worth giving your wallet a Viking funeral.

I'm not really familiar with a lot of the terminology, as graphic design in very obviously not my background, but I'm assuming by spot recoloring you just mean recoloring a small portion of the image. We need to recolor the whole image, not just a portion of it, replacing the RBG colors that are currently present with the closest matching Pantone colors. Considering that the image can be simplified down to about 25-30 colors and still look about the same, it's essentially swapping out around 30 RBG colors for Pantone ones. 

Some other sites made it seem like there was a way to do this all at once, just be selecting the image and recoloring all at once it using Pantone only swatches that in theory come up as an option in some color book that I haven't been able to get to, what with it being grayed out.

If this isn't actually the case, and I'd have to go in and manually select and replace every area of a specific color with a closely matching Pantone one, that's something I can already do in Paint.net, although it would be time-consuming, so it wouldn't really merit spending hundreds of dollars a year on software.

[Jacob Bugge]

Tiger,

GIMP and Paint.net are raster artwork applications. AI is very far from that, predominantly vector. PS is much closer, predominantly raster.

You may (re)consider whether PS is a better choice (to start with), and maybe try a trial.

Vector graphics - Wikipedia

Raster graphics - Wikipedia

[CHMprepress]

Can you share a example of the file you are talking about?

It sounds to me that you are thinking to build a bitmap images.

[Cicindelidae]

This is just a regular old jpeg. Though I have a BMP version of it, I encounter the same issue when it's loaded into Ai.

[Jon Fritz]

Photoshop is for JPEG and BMP images.

Illustrator is for vector art (scale-able, math-based imagery) not bitmapped images (like jpg and bmp).

Unless you convert your artwork to vector (basically by rebuilding it entirely within Illustrator), you aren't going to be able to do much to it in AI.

[Cicindelidae]

Okay, but when I try to open the image in Ps, it doesn't look like there's any Pantone recolor option there either.

[Jon Fritz]

Pantone (Spot Colors) are typically used when a piece of artwork has only a handful of colors. You'd never use it for a photograph, but things like icons, infographics or logos would be prime candidates. If you're working with something like that, it would probably be best to either rebuild the art in AI from scratch, or possibly use AI's Image Trace functions to convert the art to vector first, then recolor with whatever Pantone colors you like.

[Test Screen Name]

If this is baffling, perhaps you can post a link to a web page or youtube video that is doing what you are trying to do, and tell us what you have (e.g. an RGB JPEG).

[CHMprepress]

The more you explain the more stranger it gets:=)

You really gonna build a rib file into a file with 30+ spot colors?

Is this for Print?

Can you give a real example?

[Cicindelidae]

Well I don't know what a rib file is, so maybe, if that's what it takes to get it done.

In theory, the image will eventually be printed on labels. What sort of real example do you need?

[Doug A Roberts]

A spot colour means a particular type of ink. Pantone inks are a type of spot colour.

People are confused in this thread because recolouring an image with 20-30 spot colours would mean a very expensive print job. People don't usually print multi-colour images with them -- they're usually used sparingly for specific purposes -- and wouldn't usually need to do what you seem to be asking.

[Test Screen Name]

Are you still thinking that Photoshop, Illustrator are *purchased*? One off? They aren't. Only subscriptions are available.

Anyway, I agree that it's pretty inconceivable that you would be printing with 30 spot colours, and there is a misunderstanding somewhere. Let's go back: what leads you to the conclusion that you want to replace your colours with "Pantone" colours. If it's a web page, please give a link. If it's a requirement, please tell us the exact words. You are on a slope that is not only slippery, it has the potential to be very expensive indeed. (Far beyond the cost of many years' subscriptions).

[Cicindelidae]

Of course not, I know they're subscription. How is it relevant to the question though?

I'll do my best to explain the situation--

The image was apparently, at some point, sent to a company that makes labels. From what I can tell they're basically a layer of clear plastic on top of a 2-D color paper label to make them look three dimensional.

The problem is that when they have printed the labels in the past (or tried to get them printed) the results end up in a variety of different colors, instead of the colors in the file. Someone from the company asked about this and got back some sort of reply, which, translated from German says:

"Create as solid colors. Use HKS, Pantone, or RAL color palette. Do not use CMYK and RGB shades."

So the idea was to take the image that we already had and convert the colors in the image from RGB to Pantone. I looked through the HKS and RAL pallettes and the colors simply were not close enough to be useful.

[Jon Fritz]

In Photoshop, Pantone colors would generally be brought in before the file is flattened to JPG.

You could use Image > Adjustments > Replace Color function to knock out colors and replace them with Pantone versions. You select the color you want to replace, then double click on the Result color chip, instead of moving the sliders. That will open the color-picker dialogue window. Clicking Color Libraries will allow you to get to Pantone colors.

Again, this is not something you'd do with a photograph, or items with many colors.

[Jacob Bugge]

Tiger,

I am afraid they received a non answer.

What you need is reliability, to know what you get, every time.

One aspect of that is colour management, but I believe that your issue may actually the much more conspicuous difference between colours you can see on screen and colours you can print with CMYK. You can (more or less) see the fundamental difference in PS (or AI) if you switch from RGB Color Mode to CMYK Color Mode, do it on a copy of your original document (file).

One way out may be to have things printed on a printer that has additional colours, in which case you may be able to get (much closer to) the RGB colours you have (created) on screen.

Here is a bit of further reading:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=8+colour+printer&t=ffnt&ia=web

8-Color Printing: What’s Hype and What’s Real?

RGB color model - Wikipedia

CMYK color model - Wikipedia

[Cicindelidae]

Well I know that's part of the problem, the issue I'm having is how to fix it in the simplest way possible. The image we're trying out at the moment has a logo in part of it that seems to be causing the bulk of the issues. I doubt they'll switch to a different place for printing, so the only thing I can do at the moment is try to find a way to get the image in Pantone colors, since they've just asked me to make it so it will be acceptable to print correctly.

Thus far, it's sounding like it may be easier to basically rebuild the logo from scratch using the colors I actually need though. The number of colors is only that high due to the blue gradient in the logo background. If not for the gradient, it would only use three colors.

[Jon Fritz]

Your gradient is likely far fewer colors than you think.

Could you post the picture here? I'm betting the contributors here would be able to tell you exactly how to convert the artwork fairly quickly.

[Jacob Bugge]

Tiger,

In addition to what Jon just said (I was just about to post the following), if you are lucky, the blue gradient may be created from only one Pantone colour (different tints/percentages).

[Cicindelidae]

I don't think I'm allowed to post the picture here at the moment, but I did take a look at the RGB mix for the gradient colors. One color is like a primary blue and the color it fades into is a very light purple for some reason. I was considering suggesting to them that they change it to make the blue section just the one blue, since it might simplify things.

[Jacob Bugge]

Tiger,

One color is like a primary blue and the color it fades into is a very light purple for some reason.

Actually, that is a good description of what you see if you create a gradient with only a global pure blue (R = 0, G = 0, B = 255) defined as a Swatch thus working like a Pantone colour, and have the gradient starting with 100% (starting as pure blue) and ending with something like 20% or 10% (ending as a very pale purple (a reddish tinge)).

So you may be lucky, with just one blue Pantone colour.