Discover step-by-step instructions on how to group and color elements of an image in a graphic design program. The article offers practical insights, including how to select and group objects of the same color, rename them, and adjust their color for a coordinated look.
Key Insights
- The article provides detailed steps on how to select and group objects of the same color, such as a character's clothing or skin elements, for easy manipulation and organization within the design.
- It discusses how to rename these grouped elements for quick identification, such as labeling all black elements as "black," or all elements of a character's shirt as "shirt."
- Once grouped and named, the article shows how to adjust the color of these elements to fit the overall design, including changing the color of a clipboard and pen to red, or darkening the color of shadows to match a jacket.
Note: These materials are provided to give prospective students a sense of how we structure our class exercises and supplementary materials. During the course, you will get access to the accompanying class files, live instructor demonstrations, and hands-on instruction.
In this video we'll be grouping our individual recruiter and grouping the objects of the same color. We can start by first hitting V on the keyboard for our selection tool and we'll delete our sample image hitting the delete key.
Next we'll select our first object this yellow object. In order to group all the yellow objects together we'll then select the other yellow pieces of her jacket. So holding shift we'll select, select and select her shoulder and then we'll right click and select group.
From here we'll double click the group typing jacket and hitting enter. Next let's select all the black elements we'll select her pants and while we could go on to select the shoes as well as the hair we can also go to select, same and we'll go to fill color. If we do this we'll see that it automatically selects all of the black elements.
Next we'll group this right clicking and selecting group. We'll then name our black elements going over to group and typing black and hitting enter. We can do the same thing with the shirt.
Selecting the shirt going to select, same fill color and it'll select all of the shirt which we'll right click, group and if we go into our group we'll double click and type shirt and hit ENTER. Next we'll select all of her skin so we'll click go to select, same fill color and right click and group. Double clicking the group and typing skin.
Let's then do the clipboard and pen which we'll just select by holding shift, right click and group and finally we'll do this with our shadows. In this case we'll just click both and group them double clicking and typing shadows and hit ENTER. From here we'll see that we still have a few paths that are unassigned so let's see where they are.
To select them we'll click on the right side and we'll see we have something here in the middle. If we delete it using the delete key we'll see it's now taken care of. We'll do the same thing selecting this path and zoom out to see that it's right here in the middle and we'll click delete.
We'll select the next path and delete it. The next path and in this case this is part of the shirt so we'll click and drag it into shirt and last we have a compound path which we'll delete. Looking at this path right here we can see we accidentally still have part of our skin beneath the shirt.
We'll scroll up and if we double click in isolation mode we can select it and simply delete it. We'll click outside and zoom out and the rest of this looks good. We're now ready to begin adding colors to our individual.
Next let's select all of the elements within recruiter. Looking to the right of our recruiter layer and we now have them all selected and let's hit CTRL C to copy. From here we'll create a new layer and type back recruiter and hit ENTER.
We'll then use the hand tool to go into our artboard and hit CTRL V. We now have an additional recruiter so that we can keep the original off to the side while we make changes to this recruiter. The first thing we'll do is hit v on the keyboard to select it and drag it over to the right. We'll then right click and click group.
Now if we click outside and click back on our recruiter she's easy to move throughout. Next let's reflect our recruiter. To do this we'll right click go to transform and then go to reflect.
We'll have options for how we can reflect our image and in this case we'll select vertical clicking preview to preview the change. This way she's facing the left and we'll click okay. Next let's drag her a little bit to the left and down and I like the look of her right here.
If we zoom out we can now assign colors to her. To do this we'll double click on her so that we're inside the group and remember that each of the colors is still assigned. Let's first start by assigning the color of our clipboard and pen.
I'll use the eyedropper tool shortcut i on the keyboard and we can choose from any of the colors that we have. In this case I'll choose red. Next we can also change the color of her jacket.
To do this I'll hit v and select her jacket and then hitting i I can shift the color of her jacket. In this case I like the color of the blue so I'll hit CTRL shift a to deselect and right away we'll see that I need to also change the color of the shadows. To do this I'll zoom in and using the hand tool I'll move over then I'll hit v and select the shadows.
From here I'll hit i and choose the same color as the jacket so that we can go into the fill by double clicking and I'll simply drag down making it darker. I'll leave it right about here and click ok and if I deselect hitting CTRL shift a we'll see that we have these shadows as a darker color from the jacket. I like the look of this now.
If you'd prefer to also change her skin color or change her hair feel free to do so and for my recruiter I'm going to leave her as is here. I'll hit v and double click outside the artboard to exit isolation mode and scroll over to view the back of my postcard. Well done! Let's hit CTRL S on the keyboard to save our work and in the next video we'll be finalizing the back of our postcard.
See you there!