If you’ve been reading my tips for a while, you may remember one I wrote about Convert to Grayscale. If not, let me refresh your memory. To convert color art to black and white, select all objects and go to Filter > Color > Convert to Grayscale. What I didn’t mention is the error message that you get if you’ve used Gradients or Patterns in the art. This Filter will not convert objects that have these Fills. So how can you get around this?
Select the objects with Gradient and Pattern Fills and Expand them (Object > Expand) to convert them to regular vector objects. Then, with these Expanded objects selected, use Convert to Grayscale and they should convert without a problem. A word of caution: Expanded Gradients and Patterns can contain hundreds of vector objects as well as Masks that hide much of what’s been Expanded. This can make additional work on your art quite difficult. Before Deselecting these Expanded objects, Lock them in the Layers palette.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
