To recolor a pattern in Illustrator, select the object filled with the pattern swatch, choose Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork, and change the colors with the color wheel, a Color Library or the Assign tab under Advanced Options. It works well on vector patterns. On a raster print you first have to trace it into vectors, and that is where a one-click colorway tool is usually faster.
How to recolor a pattern swatch with Recolor Artwork
Adobe's Recolor artwork help page describes the current Recolor dialog. For a pattern, the steps are:
- Duplicate the object (or the pattern swatch) first, so the original colorway stays untouched.
- Select the object that is filled with the pattern.
- Choose Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork. The Recolor dialog opens.
- Pick a route:
- Color Library: recolor from Document Swatches, a swatch group or a curated set.
- Color Theme Picker: click or marquee a reference image or object on the canvas to borrow its palette.
- Color wheel: drag the color stops. Linked stops keep the harmony; unlink them to move one color alone.
- Use Prominent Colors to see which colors dominate and drag their edges to change their weight.
- Use Colors to limit how many colors the recolored artwork uses, which helps when the print is going to a screen printer.
- Save the result with New swatch group, choosing Save All Colors or Save Prominent Colors, so the palette is in the Swatches panel for the next colorway.
Two shortcuts are useful for exploring: Change color order randomly shuffles colors among the elements, and Change saturation and brightness randomly varies the values. Illustrator also offers Generative Recolor, which recolors artwork from a text prompt.
Precise color mapping with Advanced Options
For production colorways you usually need exact control: this navy becomes that teal, the ground stays ecru. Click Advanced Options to open the Recolor Artwork dialog and work in the Assign tab:
- Current Colors lists the colors in the artwork; New lists what replaces them. Drag rows to change which old color maps to which new one.
- Double-click a color in the New column to set it in the Color Picker, for example from a buyer's reference values.
- Exclude selected colors keeps a color, such as the ground, from being recolored.
- Merge colors into a row collapses near-duplicate shades onto one new color; Separate colors into different rows undoes it.
- Harmony Rules builds a balanced scheme from a base color if you want a starting point.
- Tick Recolor Art to preview, then click OK.
Adobe notes that the Tints and Shades and Hue Shift colorization methods are only available when you choose not to preserve spot colors. If your file uses spot colors for separations, check that setting before you assign.
How to recolor a pattern brush
Pattern brushes are built from tiles for the sides, corners, start and end of a path, so you recolor the brush artwork rather than the stroke:
- Drag the pattern brush from the Brushes panel onto the artboard.
- Select that artwork and recolor it with Recolor Artwork, as above.
- Select the recolored artwork with the Direct Selection tool and Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (macOS) it onto the original brush in the Brushes panel.
- When Illustrator asks, choose Apply to Strokes to update every path that uses the brush, or Leave Strokes to apply the new colors only to new strokes.
If you want a second colorway of the brush rather than a replacement, drag the recolored artwork into the panel as a new brush instead.
Where Recolor Artwork breaks: raster prints
Recolor Artwork works on vector fills and strokes. Many textile prints are not vector: they are painted, scanned, photographed, or generated as images, with soft edges, texture and thousands of slightly different pixel colors. A placed JPG or PNG does not give the Recolor dialog a short list of editable colors to remap.
Adobe's route is to vectorize first. Image Trace converts a raster image into editable vector graphics, and you must click Expand before you can edit the result like any other vector object. After that, Recolor Artwork works. The costs are real, though:
- A watercolor or textured print can trace into a very large number of paths, which makes the file slow and the color list long.
- Gradients, brush texture and fine shading get simplified into flat shapes, so the print stops looking like the original.
- Every new colorway repeats the mapping by hand, row by row.
For flat vector motifs, Illustrator is excellent. For a painterly or photographic print, tracing changes the design itself, which is rarely what a buyer wants from a colorway.
One-click colorways: how a colorway generator differs
A colorway generator works on the pixels directly. Texloom's Colorway Generator reads the design's main colors, then produces a whole set of recolored versions while keeping the shading and detail inside each color region. In the studio you:
- Choose how many design colors to read, from 3 to 8.
- Mark each design color as Auto, Keep (the same exact color in every colorway, ideal for a ground) or Set (a color you choose, used in every colorway).
- Pick how many colorways to make, from 4 to 12, a color family (Light, Dark, Bright, Dusty, Dark matching or Any) and a scheme style: Auto, Hue Shift, Complementary, Analogous or Mono.
- Star the ones you like, shuffle the rest, edit any single colorway's swatches, and download one file or all of them as a ZIP.
The free online Colorway Generator is the lighter version: upload a JPG, PNG or WEBP up to 10 MB, pick a preset palette (Warm, Cool, Earthy, Neon, Pastel, Monochrome, Indigo or Florentine) or type up to 6 hex colors, and download a lossless PNG up to 1,800 px on the longest side. Each source color is matched to the target that is closest by perceptual color difference, the CIELAB-based way textile labs judge a match.
Illustrator vs a colorway generator, side by side
| Illustrator Recolor Artwork | Texloom Colorway Generator (studio) | Free online Colorway Generator | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best input | Vector patterns and brushes | Raster prints with a handful of distinct colors | Raster prints, quick tests |
| Raster prints | Trace and expand first | Works directly | Works directly |
| Control | Exact color-by-color mapping, spot colors | Keep or set any color, family, scheme style | Presets or up to 6 hex colors |
| Output per run | One colorway | 4 to 12 colorways | One colorway |
| Output format | Editable vector | Image files, single or ZIP | PNG up to 1,800 px |
A workflow that uses both
Many studios do not choose one tool. A practical split:
- Keep the master print in its native format: vector in Illustrator, raster in Photoshop or Texloom.
- Generate a wide set of colorways quickly from the raster master and shortlist three to six with the merchandiser or buyer.
- For the shortlisted colorways that must hit exact references, map the final values precisely, in Illustrator's Assign tab for vector art or by setting exact colors for raster art.
- Check the tile still repeats, then present every colorway on one page.
Recoloring changes colors, never geometry, but check every colorway in the free Seamless Tile Checker anyway. A faint seam that was invisible in a low-contrast original can jump out once a light ground meets a dark motif in the new palette, and a 3 x 3 preview catches it in seconds. Name each colorway as you go, for example by season and ground color, rather than v2 or v3, so the buyer and the mill refer to the same file.
The step-by-step colorway tutorial covers choosing carrier colors and building the target palette, and making fabric colorways from one pattern shows how to turn one master into a seasonal range.
Next step: take one raster print you would normally trace, run it through the colorway generator with the ground set to Keep, and compare the set against a single Recolor Artwork pass in Illustrator. You will see quickly which tool fits that print.
