Recolor Artwork and Edit Colors
Good for replacing a palette, harmonies, colour balance, saturate and converting to grayscale. Not built for shaping the light and dark of a whole illustration the way a photographer does.
GUIDE · COLOUR IN ILLUSTRATOR
Is there Curves
in Illustrator?
No. Curves, Levels and Hue/Saturation are Photoshop adjustments; Illustrator's colour commands (Edit › Edit Colors, Recolor Artwork) can swap and balance colours but have no tone curve, no levels and no per-channel control. Ilo Color Tools brings the Photoshop set to vector artwork, live as you drag.
01 — WHAT ILLUSTRATOR HAS, AND WHAT IT DOESN'T
Recolor is for swapping.
Curves is for tone.
Photoshop adjustments, for vectors
Curves with a live histogram of your artwork's colours, Levels with gamma, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, Exposure, Brightness/Contrast, Temperature/Tint, Shift to Color, Desaturate and Invert. Everything stays vector.
02 — HOW IT WORKS
Select, drag, done.
- 01
Select the artwork
Shapes, groups, compound paths, clipping masks and text, in RGB or CMYK documents.
- 02
Pick an adjustment
Drag the curve or the sliders: fills, strokes, every gradient stop and each letter of the text change together, live on the artboard.
- 03
Keep it or undo
Apply, or undo with ⌘Z. Save any adjustment as a preset and reuse it across projects.
03 — QUESTIONS
Good to know.
Does Illustrator have a Curves adjustment?
No. Curves and Levels exist in Photoshop and Camera Raw. In Illustrator you get them for vector colours with a plugin such as Ilo Color Tools (or, for some features, Astute Graphics Phantasm).
Does it rasterize my artwork?
No. It changes the colour values of fills, strokes, gradient stops and text; the artwork stays editable vectors.
Can it prepare colours for print?
Yes. Print Match converts RGB to CMYK that keeps the look on screen, within your ink limit, and Riso Match builds real Risograph plates from 70+ Riso inks.
What about photos?
Color Tools works on vector colours. For placed photos and RAW files, use Ilo Raw, the photo developer for Illustrator.
What does it cost?
5 days free with every feature and no card, then from $7 a month; see pricing.