Skip to main content

Illustrator teases tool to recolor an entire graphic in a few clicks

Adobe Illustrator Sneak at OFFF | Adobe Creative Cloud

Designers struggling to find the perfect color palette for a graphic could soon have a new tool at their disposal — and it only requires a photograph. On Thursday, April 25, Adobe released a sneak peek at a potential upcoming Adobe Illustrator feature that recolors entire graphics in just a few clicks, using a photo as the inspiration.

While matching a color found in a photograph or another piece of artwork is as simple as using the eyedropper tool, replacing each color in a design is a much more tedious process. The tool, currently just called Color Transfer, adjusts each element inside a vector graphic at once, allowing designers to quickly switch to a new color palette, or experiment with different color options.

Related Videos

The tool works by taking the color palette from an existing image imported into the Illustrator Libraries. (Libraries also allows users to add photos from Adobe Stock.) Adobe didn’t share how the software determines what color goes to what part of the graphic, though based on the company’s focus for previous updates, artificial intelligence could be involved and bringing the tool to life.

Adobe says that artists aren’t stuck with the exact placement of the color palette that the program chooses either. Once the palette from the image is applied, Adobe says users will be able to go in and fine-tune the results.

Besides simplifying the process of recoloring complex graphics, the tool could also help artists find realistic color palettes to work with, along with the possibility of opening up more color inspiration. In a sample video, Adobe recolored an illustration of tiles from images of real Spanish tiles.

“Color shapes how we feel and think,” Adobe’s Wayne Hoang wrote in a blog post. “Harnessing the right colors is just as important as the actual artwork itself. That’s why we’ve been working on something to help you apply the just right colors to your designs — all done seamlessly and easily in Adobe Illustrator.”

Shared during the OFFF conference in Barcelona, Spain, the teaser offers a glimpse at what could be headed next to Adobe Illustrator. The design program turned 30 years old in 2017, at the time, being responsible for 180 million graphics generated a month.

Editors' Recommendations

Adobe’s craziest new tools animate photos, convert recordings to music in a click
adobe max 2018 what to expect tiffany haddish

Actress Tiffany Haddish (left) co-hosting the 2018 Adobe MAX "Sneaks" keynote with Paul Trani, senior Creative Cloud evangelist at Adobe.

Adobe’s artificial intelligence is already introducing features that streamline the creative process but a look at what is next for Adobe Sensei could push the technology beyond just time-saving tools. During Adobe Max 2019, Adobe unveiled several sneak peeks at what the software engineers are developing next using the company’s artificial intelligence, Adobe Sensei. From creating a moving photo in one click, converting a recorded voice into a musical instrument to designing an animation that reacts to real-time tweets, creatives could soon have some crazy new tools inside the Creative Cloud.
Project Moving Stills
#MovingStills: Adobe MAX 2018 (Sneak Peek) | Adobe Creative Cloud

Read more
Intel teases new dedicated graphics card slated for 2020 release
Intel GPU teaser.

Intel is looking to make the dedicated graphics market a three-horse race within the next couple of years. It teased a brand-new graphics card at the Siggraph 2018 show, where it announced plans to "set [its] graphics free." A silhouette of a full-size graphics card completed the hint at future potential and has PC users cautiously excited about what it all might mean for the industry.

Although the graphics card market in the 1990s was contested by a number of companies offering competing architectures, the only two industry giants who survived those wars were Nvidia and AMD. Since the turn of the century they've been the only two graphics card companies that have really mattered in the gaming space, and even then, AMD has often played a distant second-fiddle. Intel has always had its place in graphics with its Intel HD onboard solutions offered in almost all of its CPUs, but 2020 could see it introduce its first dedicated graphics card in decades.

Read more
Photo FOMO: Red gets cheaper, Skylum backs A.I., Illustrator teases new tool
photo fomo may 25 red sony canon adobe dsmc2 2560 x 1440 press

Afraid of missing out on the latest photo industry news while you’re out ... well, actually taking pictures? Photo FOMO is all the news you might have missed this week, published on the weekends. Alongside the biggest stories of the week, like Fujifilm’s new X-T100, a melted camera at a rocket launch, and a 4V camera from RED and Lucid, find briefs on the latest in accessories and photo industry news from this week with Photo FOMO.
Red drops prices -- and Weapon and Epic cameras
Red's cinema cameras are now a bit more affordable -- but there are fewer to choose from. This week, the company pared down its cinema-grade cameras to just three models: The DXMC2 Monstro, the DSMC2 Helium, and the DSMC2 Gemini. The move discontinues the Weapon and Epic-W.

Along with reducing the number of available cameras, the company also dropped the prices on the three remaining models. The Monstro now sits at $54,500, the Helium at $24,500, and the Gemini at 19,500.

Read more