Working with Spot Colors in Adobe Illustrator

An eye-opening material on issues with spot colors while using royalty free vectors from iStockphoto. "Picture this: You need an image for a project, and the deadline is looming. You download a cool illustration from iStock, place it in your layout and send it off to the printer. An hour later, the printer phones you back.

“Excellent,” you think, “my print job is done!” But nooo, the printer is calling to let you know that your file contains 15 spot colors, and if you really want 15 different plates made and run through the press, it’s going to cost you at least ten times more and take a whole week to finish. There goes your budget and your deadline.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? Spot colors? How did those get there? And what are they, anyway?" Continue to full article.

Switching Between CMYK and RGB Color Modes in Adobe Illustrator

In the articles section of iStockphoto.com, I found a great material about using color modes when working with vectors. 

The article explains how to find out what is the color mode that you are currently using (CMYK vs RGB), how to change it and when. If you are not familiar with using color swatches in Adobe Illustrator, you may consider checking it out too. Full Article

Art Noveau Feather Vector Pack

A free vector set of seven Art Noveau feather illustrations. If you are working on a project related to the same Art Movement you might use them for brainstorming or background decoration...

The color palette used in the pack has been downloaded from ColourLovers.com. To use the resource, load the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator. Free for personal and commercial use. Download

Retro Colors

An inspirational color palette that I found while researching retro color themes for a project that I'm currently working on. The palette is available for download here. Just have in mind that you need to register a ColourLovers.com account in order to access the download links.

Understanding CMYK print production

"With an understanding of how CMYK printing techniques can be combined, Rodney Dive explains how to overcome some common design problems and increase final output quality.

When you send a document to an output bureau or the printers, it goes through a number of processes during the transformation from its digital form into printed matter." Full article

Article: Computer Arts; Image: genctel.com

Spot Colors

"Screened in combination, the four inks of process printing – cyan, magenta, yellow and black – can create the illusion of a wide range of colors. But CMYK cannot reproduce large parts of the visible spectrum, such as very bright colors. After all, these four inks can only reflect light, not emit it."
Full Tutorial & Files Computer Arts Magazine 2008

Color: Creativity & Inspiration

"Inspired and well thought-out colour usage can produce visually balanced work with a pleasing sense of order – here are our essential tips for creatively handling color. " Article hightlights: Harmonious colors, Color in context, colors of the nature, Adobe Kuler, etc. Full Article (via Digital Arts Magazine)

Skin Tones

Create characters that glow from within, using these handy tips for painting realistic skin colouring.How do you paint skin tones? Do you fill in with one largely uniform colour, and then add a bit of a flush on the cheeks? Real skin tones are more complex than that. Read more ?! ...click here

Adobe Illustrator CS3: Live Color

Visual ID: Big Corporations

One of my favourite online spots (colourlovers.com/blog), posted a short article about the color trends that big Corporations use in ther logo designs in order to achieve influential visual recognition. LinkColoimage by Business Week: Best Global Brands 2007 report.

Color Tricks

Great color tips for Photoshop and Illustrator from Digital Arts Magazine

"Do your colours fail to dazzle? Do your lines lack oomph? Sebastian Onufszak shows some nifty Photoshop and Illustrator tools for getting great results every time.
Creating an image this striking takes talent with a pen and paper, genius with illustration software – and a lot of planning. Here, Sebastian Onufszak guides you through how he created this poster-style picture, all the way from his first sketch to the finished composition." View full tutorial

Pantone Color

Color is a an important topic in digital illustration, so I decided to add a new color category in the blog. I'll begin with a simple guide to pantone colors from colourlovers.com's blog, you can check the original article by clicking on the link below. The next posting in this category will be dedicated to the color libraries and swatches in Adobe Illustrator."Pantone was founded in 1962 as a small business that manufactured color cards for cosmetics companies. Since their humble beginning, Pantone has become a mainstay for color in the design world. The Pantone Matching System allows colors to be “matched” when they reach the production stages. They also assert that their lists of color numbers and pigment values are the intellectual property of Pantone and free use of the list is not allowed, which is controversial and could be said to cause problems, especially for open source uses. Controversy aside, the world leader in color hasn’t stopped with just their matching system and has started to move into taking over the ‘universe’ of color as well with the launch of Pantone Universe." Full text

Harmonious Color Palette

Palette Generator:Choose or upload a photo and a palette of colors based on the colors in the photo will be generated automatically. Use it to help with art projects, website design, or even with decorating your home. Works with your photos hosted on Flickr or anywhere else. Below you can see a result screenshot.