Illustrator CS2...Let's get this party started!

Yesterday my good friend Gaetan came over to help me with some new software installations. Illustrator CS2 was one of them. So I'm such a happy camper today, that I couldn't wait using my favorite program of all time again, after months of absence.

I've got an email today from Yahoo! in which they mentioned (and warned) that their photo service will be deleted, stopped, finished at 20 September. Luckily there's this link between Flickr and Yahoo, so, the process of transfering all my photos to my Flickr account was done with the touch of a button. Nice!

I've browsed through my old illustrations and newer ones, and found this one here.
And I'm gonna make a full color and vector version from it. And that's where Illustrator comes back in!
Coincidence or not?

I've rearanged my bedroom yesterday afternoon. It's totally different now, and I quite like it. I was watching this old DVD in my bed last night, and fell asleep during the first half. But from what I remember, it's a funny movie. It's called 'Happy Go Lovely', and it's about a stage girl and some rich millionair who fall in love. But the story is not as stupid as the actors in it! David Niven plays the part of the millionair, which he does splendidly swell. :)
I'll have to do some laundry today, and some groceries.. sun is shining and I'll take a walk by the beach after my household tasks..(it will be my reward for keeping my house in order).

So, after doing the groceries and the other household issues, I'm back to my illustration of the girl. I've found a good name for this illustration, "Ghost Girl". I've got my inspiration for the color swatches from this beautiful photograph I've scanned in from Vogue July 2007's photoshoot on "Ghost Girls" by David Sims.


Gatsby ghost girls, John Galliano, Vera Wang and Stephen Jones

I do love the colors in this picture, so I've scanned it, opened Photoshop CS2, went to Image Ready to get the color swatches of this particular photograph and then saved it as an Adobe exchange Swatch file.


The scanned image opened in Photoshop CS2


When you open the picture in Photoshop CS2, you can easily make the colors more softened, toned and stronger by using the Smart Blur tool and use a little Radius (like 3.0) and a bit more Treshold.


Open the picture in PhotoShop CS2, open Image Ready, save the swatches as an Adobe Exchange file.

After that, just open your own illustration in Illustrator CS2, open your swatches palet, search for the Adobe Exchange color swatch you've just made in Image Ready et voila:


Blown up image of the color swatches extracted from the original photograph.


The cool color palet is now a swatchpalet in Illustrator!

Now let's use these colors for coloring my illustration of the "Ghost Girl".