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.

[Cicindelidae]

That was my thought as well, if it came down to having to just redo the logo and there wasn't just a simple way to say convert to pantone the way you can just tell it to convert to grayscale.I found a pretty good swatch for the blue and tested out the gradient with it and it looks pretty decent, even just using that one color.

[Jacob Bugge]

Tiger,

You may say that the fundamental obstacle to a simple automatic one step conversion is this: when you start out with RGB (or CMYK), for each tiny step in a colour transition, fundamentally you have mutually independent values/amounts of the 3 constituent colours R, G, and B (or the 4 constituent colours C, M, Y, and K), even if all but one are 0/absent at any/many of the steps.

From everything said in this thread, I am afraid something has to give, so I believe it may be time (for all of yous/the others at your workplace) to let go the determination to stick with what and whom you have (had) and start over to the degree that you decide what is essential to keep and what can be (slightly) changed to make everything doable. In this connexion, there may be a choice between sticking with the exact colours you have now but are unable to get printed reliably, and settling for colours that are very close and ready for reliable printing, it may even be thinkable that it is possible to improve the colours.

That may open new options to get unstuck.

[Test Screen Name]

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.

[Cicindelidae]

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

[Test Screen Name]

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.

[Cicindelidae]

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.