Have you ever wondered how to find out what the closest pantone color is for your existing Illustrator artwork? How many times have you tried to convert your CMYK color to Illustrator only to find that the swatch options does not include this?

Well, here is a neat trick to convert your existing swatches (and artwork) to Pantone.

First, create a document with shapes filled with default swatches.

Next, go to your swatches panel and delete ALL your swatches.

Note: This step is great for organizing, but is not critical.  If you have swatches you need to keep, you can just skip to the next step, but be aware that you will end up with duplicate swatches.

Then, select the objects you wish to convert (in this case all) and click the “New Color Group” button located at the bottom of the swatches panel. DO NOT deselect your artwork. Keep it selected throughout this process. It saves you a step later on.

Name your group, and be sure to check “Convert Process to Global”. I prefer not to have my tints end up as separate swatches, but you can include them as well if you so choose. Click OK and you will now have a new color group with your existing colors.

Now go to your Color Guide Panel or the Options bar and click the “Edit or Apply Colors” button (the color wheel).

This will take you into the “Assign” section of the Edit or Apply Colors dialog box.

Here are the final steps to complete the conversion:

In the “Color Groups” panel on the right, click your newly created Color Group.

Next, click the “Color Reduction Options” button.

This will launch a new dialog box “Recolor Options” (I know it’s a different name than the button).

Go to the “Limit to Library” pull down and choose your Pantone Library and hit OK.

You have now mapped Pantone colors to your color group. Click OK and go back to your document.

Looking at your Swatches panel, you will notice that all of your swatches in the panel have been converted to PMS colors and your artwork has automatically converted.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 9:17 am by Kevin Stohlmeyer and is filed under C2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.