Transcript:
Hi everyone, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To. And in our Facebook group, we get a lot of questions about how to color PNG files in Adobe Illustrator. And so today I’m going to show you a few different ways you can do that. Oh, and if you want to join that Facebook group, there’s a link in the description. So we’ll be using this black mandala image and I’m going to show you 3 ways to color this. We’re going to put a texture behind it, we’re going to put a texture into the black areas, and then I’m also going to show you how to recolor parts of it with solid color. And finally, we’ll be taking some hand drawn text as a PNG image and adding some color to that. And notice that parts of this text are actually not connected, so I’ll show you how to do that too. Alright, let’s get started. Okay, so first, I’m going to create a new document. We’ll go to Print, because we may want to print this and we’ll Create. Okay, now let’s place our mandala image. I’ll go to File > Place. And here it is. This one does not have a background. It’s a transparent PNG. But even if it has a white background, it’ll work the same way. So we’ll place this image, and we’ll make it pretty big. Now we’re going to do an Image Trace on this. And it’s always best if you have a high resolution, black and white image. It just works really well for the Image Trace. So let’s come up here to Image Trace, and we’ll just click this button. And as you can see, it’s done a really great job, I’m going to hit Z and draw a box around this area. And it looks like we might not have all the information here. So I’m going to open up our Image Trace panel, which is right up here. Let’s decrease the threshold a little bit. And we’ll play around with some of these settings until we get close to what we want. This is really not an Image Trace tutorial, but this is pretty close. Now in the Image Trace window, we’re also going to want to choose Ignore White. And I’ll just get rid of that window and then we’ll Expand with CMD E. You can also hit this button right up here. We want to do the object and the fill and we’ll say OK. And so now you can see we only have a fill of black. So everything you see is black only. There is no white here, because we said in the Image Trace panel to ignore that. Now the first thing we want to do is add a background to this image. So to do that, I’m going to place another file – a textured image that I found online. So we’ll go to File > Place and we’ll place this in. I got this image from Unsplash, and the artist who created this was Anton Darrius, so you can look him up. Okay, I’m going to resize this about the size of my mandala. And then we’ll send to back with SHIFT CMD [. Now really, I want this background to only be cut out right around the edge of the mandala, and it’ll just be in the background. So I’ll have the black mandala on top of the textured image, so to do that, we have to make a clipping mask. So I’m going to click the background and hide it with CMD 3. And then I’m going to zoom in on the edge of this mandala. I’m going to hit G, which is my group selection tool right up here. G might not work for you. This is a keyboard shortcut that I set up myself. So you’ll probably have to come under here to the Direct Selection tool and then choose Group Selection tool. Now I’m going to click on the very edge – not in the black area, but on the very edge of the outermost part of the mandala so you can see it’s highlighted. If we zoom out, you can see we only have that outer edge and I’m going to copy that. Then I’ll click off and then I’ll paste in front (CMD F). So now we have our Clipping Mask shape. Now I’m going to unhide, so OPTION CMD 3, and now I have my Clipping Mask. And my texture and those are the only two things I want to select. So I’m going to hit V, click on my Clipping Mask, and click on the texture. And then hit CMD 7. And this is the texture just by itself. It is sitting exactly on top of that mandala. So now all we have to do is send to the back with SHIFT CMD [. So we have our black mandala. If we hide that, we can see our texture underneath. If you want to move that texture around, you can use your A tool, which is your Direct Selection, and click right in between the black somewhere on that texture in the background. And then you get this square and you can see where you can move it. So we’re just gonna go right and left. You can move it around that way and you can even resize it if you want to by hitting V and then just pulling on a handle. And now we can continue to move it around with our move tool. So that is the first way to recolor the PNG art. Alright, so let’s zoom in. Click between the blacks, select the mask and then release the mask with OPTION CMD 7, or OPTION CTRL 7 on a PC, we’ll just move all of this over. I’m going to select that mask, you can kind of see it selected back here. And I’m just going to delete that because we’re done with that. Now, let’s say we want all the black to be this texture, and then it’ll be transparent where you see the texture now, if that makes sense. Alright, so let’s click on the black part up here, you’ll see it says Group. And we need to make this a compound path because right now it’s many shapes and illustrator sees it as many shapes. When you’re using a clipping mask, you can only have one shape for the mask. And if you have something like this, you’ll need to make it one shape. And to do that, you create a compound path. So we’ll go to Object > Compound Path > Make. It doesn’t change the look of it, but you’ll see up here that it says Compound Path instead of Group. So we have this selected and now let’s select that background. So we have our mask, we have the background. And now we can hit CMD 7 or CTRL 7 on a PC. You’ll probably get this message, which is just fine. We’ll say Yes. And now everything that was black has become that texture. And then the areas behind it are just transparent. So that’s the second way to recolor PNG artwork. To get back to my black mandala, I’m going to release the clipping mask by hitting OPTION CMD 7, ALT CTRL 7 on a PC. We’ll delete this texture. And the mask is actually here, we just can’t see it. So just do CMD A or Ctrl A and you’ll see it and then you can just change it back to black. Now it’s easy to just change the color if you want the whole thing to become red. That’s pretty simple. You just click on whatever color you want. But here’s how to change all the white areas to whatever color you want. So I’m going to zoom in here and then with my G tool, the Group Selection tool, I’m going to click on the edge of the things that I want to change. You have to get right on the very edge – you cannot click into the black area. So I’m going to click all these outer rings. And then I’m going to CMD X, which is cut, and then CMD F, which is paste in front. And they’ve all become black because I just kind of took them out of their Compound Path, if that makes sense. And now we’ll choose another color. If you only have gray up here, you can go to your Color window and choose either RGB or CMYK. You’ll probably be on grayscale. It might be a good idea to just select the entire thing and change it at the beginning to something other than grayscale. So we can just continue this process of clicking on the edge of things, cutting CMD X and then pasting in front and then changing colors that way. Now when I did that, I’m sure you’ll notice that we have some dots. Those dots are now behind this yellow piece. So I’m going to hit CMD Y or CTRL Y on a PC and bring all those dots to the front. And to do that, I’m going to select parts of this graphic with my Group Selection tool and hide them. We’ll select all these and hide those. And now we can select all of those, CMD X to those, CMD F to paste in front, and we’ll keep those black. Now we’ll OPTION CMD 3 or ALT CTRL 3 to unhide everything, CMD y, and now you can see they’re all in front like they should be. So anytime you have pieces that are on top of pieces, you’ll have to do that. And I’m just going to go through and kind of finish this up. So when you’re completely done, you’ll probably have something that looks like this. It will probably take a while to color each and every one of these little pieces in here, but in the end, it looks pretty cool. Okay, let’s select all and delete that. And then I’m going to bring in some hand drawn type. So we’ll place that in. With this type, I want to be able to color these sections in here. So first we’ll Image Trace, just like we did with a mandala. We’ll come in here to our tracing result. And this time, I’m going to leave the white, so I don’t want to check ‘ignore white.’ And we’ll go ahead and trace this. And then we’ll expand: CMD E or Ctrl E and then…or the expand button which was right up there. I’ll get rid of my Image Trace box. I’m just going to draw a red rectangle with my M tool so we can see what we have. I’ll send that to back. Let’s SHIFT CMD [ or SHIFT CTRL [ on a PC. And we have lots of white because we left the white in when we did our Image Trace. So I’m going to use my A tool and click out here to get most of the whites out. And I’ll delete it. The reason I left the white in is because I actually want fills on some of this. I don’t want them here. So I’ll use my A tool and delete the white here. But I want the white here, all through here, and up in here. Now, the reason these didn’t fill in with white is because they aren’t closed. So we’ll have to close those. First, I’m going to zoom in, and then I’ll use my Q tool, which is the Lasso Tool, to just draw around the part I want to move. Then get on my A tool, the Direct Selection tool, click on one of those nodes and just bring it up like this. I can see that I’ve only got black things selected. So I’m going to go down here to my Pathfinder and unite those pieces. And we’ll come over here and do the same thing with the A. I’ll grab my Q tool, the lasso tool, draw a circle around the nodes that I want to manipulate. Then hit A, click and drag on one of those nodes, and bring them all up into the black area. And then we’ll unite that. I’m going to CMD – to zoom out, and I’ll deselect with SHIFT CMD A. We still don’t have a fill here, but we can do the same trick we did on the mandala and choose our Group Selection tool, click right on the edge of that, and on the edge of this, and then CMD X. Paste in front. And then we’ll get the eyedropper tool to change it to white. Now we can easily change the colors of these white areas. I’m going to use my Y tool, which is the magic wand, to select all the white areas at once. And we’ll change them to yellow. And now I’m going to delete my red. So this is the result we wanted. It does involve a little more work than normal because parts of the letters weren’t connected because of the way that design was set up. Alright, that’s my video for this week. If you liked it, please click on the “Like” button, and I’ll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!!