PathSnapper

Guide Guide 1 of 4

Colours: choose, change and merge them

Set how many colours PathSnapper uses, recolour any part of the artwork, merge near-duplicates, add a colour that was missed, and set the inks for print.

When you open an image, PathSnapper finds its colours and labels every pixel with one of them. That is the colour map, and every area of one colour becomes a shape in the vector. The Colours step is where you decide what those colours are.

Set the number of colours

  1. Open the Colours step.
  2. Drag Number of colours. Fewer colours join similar shades together; more keeps fine differences apart.
  3. When you let go, the colour map is redrawn and the vector is traced again.

Drag to the far right (All) to keep every colour found. Speck size sets the smallest area that is kept, and Merge how different two colours must be to stay separate.

Change a colour

  1. Click a swatch in the Palette.
  2. Type a new hex value and press Enter, or use the colour box beside it.
  3. Every shape in that colour changes at once. There is no re-trace, so any point edits are kept.

Merge two colours

  1. Click the colour you want to get rid of.
  2. Click Merge into…
  3. Click the colour it should become. Its pixels join that colour and the shapes are traced again, keeping their smooth edges.

When two colours look almost the same, PathSnapper suggests merging them. Ctrl+Z undoes a merge.

Add a colour and give it an area

  1. On the Edit step, click + beside Palette and choose Choose a colour, or Pick from the image to take one from the original.
  2. The new colour is selected, ready to paint with.
  3. Choose Fill (G) and click an area: all of it takes the new colour. Use Pencil to paint just part of one.

On the Colours step, + picks a colour that was missed straight from the image and finds all of its pixels.

Set print colours: spot and CMYK

  1. Select a swatch and type the ink under Spot colour, for example PANTONE 2768 C. You can also type exact CMYK values, or load a swatch library to match colours.
  2. On the Output step, set Print colours to CMYK.
  3. PDF, AI and EPS files then use your CMYK values, and named spot colours stay spot colours.

Try it on your own artwork

Every technique here works on the sample in the app, or on your own logo.

Try it free

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