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Participant
August 3, 2020
Answered

Limiting colors in image trace

  • August 3, 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 4116 views

So, I use image trace quite frequently to help set up screen print jobs. Most of the time I use it when someone sends a high res raster file of their logo or some other simple illustration. In the past, I always picked out the colors I needed, made swatches in a separate group, and used that group from the document library to limit the colors used when tracing. I could select just 3 colors and the image trace would produce a vector image using only 3 colors. It seems like for a while now though, anytime I try to do this it uses many shades of those colors. For example, I just tried to use only 3 swatches (black, white, and maroon), but the traced image said it used 29 colors (white, black, maroon, and shade of gray and maroon). Can anyone tell me if there is a way to fix this? Thanks!

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Correct answer Mohammad.Harb

Use "Recolor Artwork" command

edit -> edit colors -> recolor artwork 

4 replies

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 17, 2020

Can you please share the Google Drive download link as a public link?

 

Otherwise I or other participants cannot easily download your sample file.

screenTKAuthor
Participant
August 17, 2020
michelew83603738
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 3, 2020

Under the tracing options, you can set the Palette that you want to use, so if you have defined a color palette or want to use a pre-defined palette, it should be working.

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 3, 2020

This still works for me in the latest Mac OS version of Illustrator (using a library palette with a certain number of swatches).

 

Which version of Illustrator are you using? What operating system?

 

Can you share a sample .ai file as well as the swatch library you are trying to apply when tracing the image?

screenTKAuthor
Participant
August 17, 2020

Sorry it took me forever to get back to this. If you are still willing to take a look, here is a link to a file with the image I am trying to use.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t3f6nlhLSFhz7uNizccnMxZzuCxAOFYe/view?usp=sharing 

 

This was for a screen print job. I recieved a raster image from the client and wanted to try to trace it to get a clean version to use for separations. Please ignore the headless people in the middle of the cross. That was a mistake on the client's part, lol. At the top is the original image and at the bottom is my tracing attempt that hasn't been expanded yet. I used the same options I have used for years (Mode: Color, Palette: Document Library, Colors: the swatch group I want to use), but while my swatch group has 3 colors, the result says it is using 25. It doesn't seem to matter if my colors are spot colors or process colors, or if they are in a group or not. Any help you can give is greatly appreciated!

Mohammad.Harb
Community Expert
Mohammad.HarbCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 3, 2020

Use "Recolor Artwork" command

edit -> edit colors -> recolor artwork 

screenTKAuthor
Participant
August 3, 2020

Thank you! That worked out perfectly. I'm a little disappointed there's an extra step now, but oh well. Not a big deal. Thanks again!