Floral pattern art by Maria Galybina: https://creativemarket.com/maria.galybina/625700-Floral-Pattern

For this lesson, use your own art if you'd like to follow along, or you can use the 01Houses exercise file from the last section.

Why create color groups? Because they are accessible inside Recolor Artwork and they make recoloring faster and more versatile. The Recolor Artwork panel displays a list of your color groups on the right hand side. Clicking on a color group in the Recolor Artwork panel instantly displays your art in the new color palette.

Methods for Creating Color Groups

In the Swatches panel

• Select swatches (holding shift for contiguous swatches or command/ctrl for non-contiguous) and click the folder button at the bottom of the panel.
• Drag swatches into (or out of) an existing color group
• Open a color library from the button at the bottom of the panel, and click a folder icon to add it's group to your Swatches panel

From selected art

• Select art on the artboard and click the folder button at the bottom of the Swatches panel
• In the dialog box, name the group, choose Selected Art, select Global swatches (if you want them)
• Only select Include Tints if your art is already linked to Global swatches

In the Color Guide panel

• The Color Guide panel suggests a harmony of colors based on the current color you have selected
• Click the button at the lower right of the panel to create a color group from the center column of the Color Guide

About Global Swatches

• Global swatches will link to the art and allow you to make edits to the color that will update the art wherever the color is applied (double-click any color swatch to edit the color)
• Global swatches are identified by a white triangle in the corner of the swatch
• Global swatches include a tint slider, so you can lighten the color by a percentage

Creating Global Swatches

• To change a regular swatch to a global swatch, double-click it and check the global checkbox in the dialog box
• To change a group of swatches to global, deselect any swatches first, then select the swatches by holding shift, then double-click (as you hold shift) to open a dialog box, and check the global checkbox to change all the swatches at once

Global Swatches, Tints & Recolor Artwork

Because of the tints, Global swatches behave differently in Recolor Artwork than regular swatches. You can manage this using the Color Reduction Options Menu > Combine Tints checkbox.

See Section 6 for a demonstration.