Expert: Amy - 12/13/2005

Question
HI Amy,

I am a v. recent user of Adobe Illustrator 10 (for mac) and am
more conversant with Photoshop).

But asked to produce a high-res. vector logo for large and small
scale printing, I scanned then traced my original Photoshop  
logo into Illustrator. I have now created a black and red logo
also using gradient fills (red-black) in parts of the logo. However
I also need to supply the image in B & W/greyscale for the
company and can't get out of my colour image! I need to lose
the red, or save the file back from colour into greyscale.

Using f''ilter - colours - convert to greyscale' doesn't work on
the 'patterns and gradients' I have already drawn! Is there any
way I can strip my image of the 1 colour (red) it has?
I have multiple lines and fills rather than a few simply filled areas
of colour. (Maybe I need to save as a different format then
convert.) But the artwork still needs to be vector/high res. for
large scale signage display.

Also I am worried that I have ended up with more than 1 shade
of black and red in this logo image. Is there a way I can select
the differences of these shades and change then all to just 2
single uniform shades of red and black? I really hope you can
help as I have scoured my manual to no avail and am staying up
too late and too long trying to solve this issue!

Many thanks for any advice you can supply!

Anna  

Answer
ADDENDUM
I forgot to ask you to save down to v9 for me so I can open it on my PC....
-Amy

Hey there, Anna.

True - convert to grayscale doesn't convert gradients. But all you need to do is edit the gradient fill itself so that it goes from gray to black (or shades of black).

Do you know how to edit gradients?  If not, I am just sitting here and I can help you with that. I would probably need to look at the file to answer the question about selecting shades.

E-mail the file to me at AmyLynPace@yahoo.com
since allexperts can't handle attachments.

-Amy