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Question

Trial Version Features?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 22, 2019
8 replies
2405 views

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.

This topic has been closed for replies.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

If your question contains factual errors, outside the question, we try to correct it. Just like in a normal conversation. Sometimes the whole question changes, if the questioner realises they can work differently. Sometimes it doesn't, and the people who answer just have a warm glow of smugness.

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

I just...what.

How is this helpful?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but this feels like a situation where one person says, "Oh my god that man is dying, can I use your phone to call the police?" and the other person says, "I don't know. CAN you?", implying that they should be saying "may I" instead.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

As an aside

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

Because the way you asked your questions suggested you did NOT know, or didn't have the full facts. For example you wrote

"hesitant to buy something" -- but you don't buy, you subscribe. And you wrote

"Ps costs hundreds of dollars " when it costs from $10 per month and you can subscribe to Illustrator for a single month from $30.

But now we're on the same page -- you're trying to solve a real problem, using the advice you've had, which has led you in completely the wrong direction. Thankfully, as it was a head-scratcher otherwise.

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

I'm still rather confused regarding how the subscription vs one-time purchase is relevant to the actual problem though.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

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).

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

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.

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

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

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.

C

CHMprepress

Inspiring

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?

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

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

Community Expert

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.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

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).

C

CHMprepress

Inspiring

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.

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

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

Community Expert

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.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

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?

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

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

Community Expert

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

Jon Fritz

Community Expert

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.

CicindelidaeAuthor

Known Participant

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

Community Expert

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.

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