Limiting colors in image trace

[screenTK]

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!

[Mohammad.Harb · Accepted solution]

Use "Recolor Artwork" command

edit -> edit colors -> recolor artwork 

[screenTK]

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!

[Kurt Gold]

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?

[screenTK]

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!

[michelew83603738]

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]

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

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

[screenTK]

Sorry about that. Here you go!

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