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The Magic of Color Styles

© 2005 by Foster D. Coburn III. All Rights Reserved.

In a previous tutorial we talked about one method of changing the colors in a document. By using the Find and Replace Wizard, the process was quite simple. You even saw how you could change outline properties using the same Wizard. This time we're going to continue our discussion of changing colors by looking at Color Styles. Using them is quite simple, getting them just right can require a better understanding of how they work.

Creating Color Styles

We're going to start with the same piece of clip art we used in the previous tutorial for the spot color example. The original is shown below. You'll notice that it has three basic colors. The water is in blue, the boat is two shades of green and the background and trim are shades of black.

The first step of the color transformation is to bring up the Color Styles Docker. Select Window | Dockers | Colors Styles from the menu. This brings up the Docker shown at right.

Some users will jump right in and find that nothing happens. So it is very important that you select the objects in your drawing from which you want to create a color style. Typically this is the whole graphic. In that case, double-click the Pick tool to select all objects and move over to the Color Styles Docker. At the top left are four icons. On the far right is the Auto-create Color Styles button. Click this and you'll get the dialog box shown below.

At the upper left are options for using fill and outline colors. Typically you'll want Color Styles created from both. If not, deselect the option you don't want. Automatically link similar colors together is fairly self explanatory. If you have a graphic with various shades of red, they will be linked together so that changing the master color will change all the shades as well.

The main color is called a parent color and any colors linked to the parent are called child colors. You have the option of having child colors converted to CMYK as the Color Styles are created. This would be important if you are creating CMYK artwork.

The last option is the one that can have the largest effect on the Color Styles created. Modifying the Parent creation index slider determines how close colors need to be before they are linked. Moving the slider towards Many parents will result in more parent colors and a smaller range of hues that would be linked. Sliding towards Few parents will link more colors together but it can also result in color shifts. You'll get the best results by trying various settings and clicking Preview until you get the right balance of parents and children. When you have the colors you desire, click OK to return to the Color Styles Docker. Notice how all the parent and child colors are now shown at right.

Editing Color Styles

Just creating the Color Styles isn't all that useful. Where this really comes in handy is changing the colors to something else. Now that we've built the parent/child relationships, it is easy to change the parent colors and watch how the whole image will be transformed. And since many people work with spot colors, let's change the image so that it is in spot colors.

First, let's change the green color to a dark red spot color. Click on the green parent color and the icons at the top of the Docker will all be available. The third icon is the Edit Color Style button. It will allow us to choose a different color. After the dialog appears, click on the Palettes tab to get the dialog shown at right. Automatically the closest spot color was chosen. In this case, Pantone 361. But remember we want a dark red so let's go with Pantone 202. Click OK and notice how all the green tones in the image are changed to red and pink tones. Repeat the process for the blue and black and you've now got a spot color image.

The image at right shows the Color Style Docker after the color changes have been made and the image below shows the finished image.

There are two other Color Style features we haven't discussed. The leftmost icon allows you to create a new color style from scratch. This would be most useful if you were creating a graphic rather than modifying it. Similarly the next icon is to create a new Child color. The graphic at right shows the dialog box that appears. You can see that you have the choice of how many colors you want created. If you are not working with spot colors, you can also choose if you want the new colors to be lighter or darker as well as the amount of similarity. So if you create a bright red Parent color, you could have CorelDRAW automatically create 15-20 shades of red to be used throughout your image. Oftentimes this is much easier than finding good colors manually.

In Closing

You've now seen two very different ways for changing the colors of an image. In some cases, Find and Replace works better. Other graphics will be easier to change with Color Styles. Together they provide powerful ways to get exactly the colors you want in an image. Try out both methods until you discover the method that works best for your workflow.

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_{Last Updated
Wednesday, March 21, 2007.}

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