It will depend entirely on how the artist has created the artwork as to whether you can find out the information you require.
If pantone colours have been used to construct the image then this tutorial shows you where to access the references and summarises the Tool and Colour palettes to help with navigating Illustrator.
From your Tool Palette, select your Direct Selection Tool.
Click on the vector shape you wish to identify and then consult the colour palette (in the diagram below, it is shown to the right of the image). You will see that the colour information is displayed as soon as you click on the object and if the artist has used a pantone colour, the reference information will appear here.
The example below shows that when the purple area of the house logo is selected using the Direct Selection Tool, the Colour Palette shows Pantone 527
Once you have ascertained that your Illustrator document contains pantone information, you can continue to identify all parts of the logo by following the same steps for each segment
If there is no pantone reference information contained in your file, this example is typical of the colour results you might see.
The colour information is the CMYK value for the swatch. In this case the purple is made up of 50% Cyan, 100% Magenta with no Yellow or Black.
If you are having trouble obtaining a Pantone reference from your customer, we may be able to recommend the nearest match based upon the CMYK values. In all cases, though, pantone references are, by far, the most reliable source of colour information for an accurate reproduction using silk screen printing
THE ILLUSTRATOR COLOUR PALETTE
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1. Tutorial-Swatch-PaletteThis controls the colour of your stroke (outline).
2. This allows you to choose the colour of your fill.
3. The symbols tab holds preset vectors that are made for available for quick easy editing.
4. The brush tab controls the settings of your brush.
5. The graphic styles tab has vectorised textures that you can apply to your paths.
6. This is the weight of your stroke (outline)
THE ILLUSTRATOR TOOL PALETTE
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1. SELECTION TOOL You can use it to click on paths and shapes you've created to scale/transform them, or move them.
2. DIRECT SELECTION TOOL You can use it to select specific points on a path in order to fix them or move them or adjust their angles.
3. PEN TOOL Use it to draw your vector shapes. Note: if you click and hold on the pentool, a submenu will pop up with "Add-Point tool" and "Subtract-Point tool". They do exactly what their name says.
4. TEXT TOOL Select it and click anywhere on your canvas to create text.
5. LINE TOOL It will create a vectorised line. If you click and hold on this menu, its submenu contains other tools such as Arc and spiral.
6. SHAPE MENU From this menu, you can create a rectangle, square, rectangle with rounded corners, square with rounded corners, circle, elipse, a polygon (you specify the number of sides), and a star. The best way to use this tool is to select the type of shape you would like to create and then single click on your canvas. This allows you to input custom, exact settings for your shape.
7. BRUSH TOOL It is much like the brush tool in Photoshop, however its settings are controlled in the stroke menu (will be explained below.)
8. PENCIL TOOL / SMOOTH TOOL / ERASE TOOL The pencil tool is used to manually draw paths and is extremely useful. The smooth and erase tools are self-explanatory.
9. FILL COLOUR Any path you draw will be filled with this color. If you require your shape to have no fill, click on the white square with a red diagonal line and this will make it transparent.
10. STROKE COLOUR Any path you draw will be outlined in this color. You can define the settings for the stroke on the stroke menu.
You can Download this tutorial as a Word Document (Tutorial Pantone References.doc) or in PDF format (Tutorial Pantone References.pdf)
