Quickly experiment with color using Generative Recolor in Illustrator

Use Generative Recolor presets and your own text prompts as a guide to jumpstart color variations for your projects.

Published December 10, 2025

00:01

Introduction

Generative Recolor in Illustrator is an AI feature driven by Adobe Firefly technology.

That means you can describe a color palette, mood or theme in everyday language, and a machine learning model uses that to generate different color schemes for your artwork.

You can also use some color presets that are supplied to jump start color variations for your projects.

My name is Brian Wood.

I'm an instructional designer at Adobe and I want to show you how to use Generative Recolor to experiment with and explore color quickly.

00:32

Opening generative recolor on vector artwork

With a project open, suppose you want to try different color themes on vector artwork like you see in this poster.

Now, I might want to make the color more appropriate for a season like summer or fall, or just maybe make something fresher or even based on brand colors.

To start, select your artwork you want to recolor.

Then click the Recolor button in the Properties panel.

In the Recolor dialog box that opens show the Generative Recolor options.

You can see them here.

Now to explore color, you can pick from a preset,

01:03

Exploring color presets and variations

you can type in your own text prompt, or even add your own custom colors to guide the prompt.

Let's start with one of these presets already here, like Trippy disco lights.

Click on it and you'll see color variations are made that you can then apply.

Let's say these aren't quite right for what you had in mind.

You can click Generate to make even more variations to try and then click one to change the artwork color.

Now what if you have a specific color theme or idea in mind?

For this poster, the concert's actually happening around Halloween time,

01:38

Creating color schemes with text prompts

so I want to make the color feel more like Halloween.

You can add your own text prompt, like Halloween and generate new color for the poster.

Once again, if you like one of these versions, you can click to update that poster artwork.

Don't forget, you can also regenerate to try other options based on that same text prompt.

Now that the color is closer to what I want,

02:05

Refining saturation and brightness with recolor options

I might want the colors to pop a bit more, maybe making them a little more saturated or even brighter.

If you want to adjust the color in the artwork, click the Recolor option up here in the dialog box.

You can see all the colors that are in the poster represented this little circles in this Color Wheel.

If you want to adjust the Saturation, for instance down here, make sure it's selected and then you can drag the slider And you can try the Brightness right here and drag the same slider.

It doesn't matter what you're making branding content, posters or really any artwork Generative Recolor can help you experiment with color faster.

Why don't you try practicing on this poster?

You can use Generative Recolor to see what you come up with.

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.

What you learned

What is Generative Recolor?

Generative Recolor is part of an innovative suite of AI-powered capabilities powered by Adobe Firefly. It enables you to recolor artwork using simple text prompts to achieve color variations in seconds.

Experimenting with sample prompt colors

Start your color experiment by clicking one of the multiple sample prompts, like Terracotta Desert! Then create other color palettes to try by clicking Generate.

Using text prompts to create variations

Enter a text description describing the color palette, mood, or theme you want to generate, and Illustrator creates multiple variations for you to explore. Experiment with those variations and click to apply the one that best suits your needs.

Making color refinements

Refine the generated color using the options in the Recolor artwork dialog box using saturation, brightness, and more.

Instruction by: Brian Wood
Adobe Stock Contributor: Molibdenis-Studio

Try these tutorials with Illustrator

Create illustrations and other graphics with vectors.

View all plans

Cookie Settings

General information

Cookies are small text files stored by your web browser when you use websites. There are also other technologies that can be used for similar purposes like HTML5 Local Storage and local shared objects, web beacons, and embedded scripts. These technologies help us do things like remembering you and your preferences when you return to our sites, measure how you use the website, conduct market research, and gather information about the ads you see and interact with.

If enabled:

We can improve your experience by tailoring the site and the content to things we think might be of interest
We can better keep track of your preferences — like what language you prefer to use
We will better understand your likely interests so we can provide you more relevant Adobe ads and content on non-Adobe websites and in non-Adobe apps
It will help us improve the performance of our website and those of our partners who use the Adobe Experience Cloud

If disabled:

We won’t be able to remember you from session to session so the experience may not be tailored to your interests
You’ll still have access to the content of the site but certain features that depend on cookies may not function
You’ll still see ads, they just may not be as relevant to you