Using Recolour Artwork dialogue box: when/why to use Combine Tints and Hue Shift

[amandathompson]

Hello,

I am converting a black and white artwork into colours and colour tints.

And I have 2 questions about the Recolor Artwork dialogue box in Illustrator.

I cannot find any examples or explanation to clarify in the online manual, here on the forum or on YouTube etc. 

I have tried by trial and error clicking on the different options and comparing results to understand what changes occur but I don’t understand/can’t see what changes are in play when I chose:

1. Combine Tints in the Colorize Method

Why would we chose to use or not use this option?

What does this help us to achieve?

Are there any examples documented?

2. Hue Shift

What determines or where is determined the Hue that is shifted to?

In this case I have a purple colour to be applied and the Hue Shift field brings up a brown hue to shift to.

Where is this brown colour coming from?

Are there any examples documented?

This discussion on recolouring tinted artwork was really helpful but it didn’t address the questions I have here.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/how-to-recolor-a-tinted-screened-artwork-with...

Thank you for any advice.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Tints combined

Tints not combined

[amandathompson · Accepted solution]

Thank you very much for your reply and the clear screenshots.

So, the Tints Combined (or not) is when the artwork to be recoloured already has Tint colours in them.

I think I understand this better now. 

[Monika Gause]

The Hue shift will introduce a color shift when recoloring. You absolutely do not want that when your goal is black and white or when you want to preserve spot colors. Those two bottom methods are rather meant when you are exploring colors.

The other three are for more precise work. 

[amandathompson]

Okay, thanks for your reply.  I already understood that it introduced a colour shift.

But what I was asking was: how is the colour to be shifted to defined/decided?

In my original question I gave the example of base artwork to be recoloured that is black and white. But with other artwork that is multicoloured, if I wanted to recolour them, what decides/determines the Hue to be shifted to?

Is the Hue to be shifted to decided by random?

Is it decided by a relation to the current selected artwork to be recoloured? 

Is the Hue to be shifted to that of another artwork object I have unknowingly selected prior to opening the Recolour Artwork dialogue panel? 

Or something else? 

I am sorry if I seem persistent or obtuse in asking the question again. My only goal is to understand what possibilities there are with these functions so that I can decide what and how to use them.

If you or another expert user could possibly elaborate or show an example I would really appreciate it.   Thanks for any further information.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Please check out this article: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/color-groups-harmonies.html 

[amandathompson]

Thank you very much for the link to the user guide docs section/article. I found information about the Hue Shift mechanism outlined at the bottom about Colorize Methods:

"Hue Shift sets the most typical color in the Current Colors row as a key color and exactly replaces the key color with the new color. The other current colors are replaced by colors that differ from the new color in brightness, saturation, and hue by the same amounts that the current color differs from the key color."

It was my oversight, my mistake in not seeing this when I looked through this section before.
Thanks again for your time and help.

[Monika Gause]

No problem. That is some wall of text in that article. Glad you could sove it.