You may recognize the above sample from a previous tip called Making a 3D Pie Chart. Well I thought that it was appropriate for this kind of tip as well.

This group consists of gradient fills, text and Blends. All the colors were built in CMYK, but you can really use any color model for this tip.

Some things you might want to do before we move to the next step. If you're colors are bland or don't have many dark, contrasty areas, use some of the color control options under the Xtras -> Color menu. This includes Saturate Colors and Darken Colors.

Next select the objects you wish to convert to monotone. While they are selected, go to the Xtras menu -> Colors -> Convert to Grayscale. Your art should now look like above.

All the color information is accurately converted to Grayscale removing any RGB or CMYK values.

Now we are ready to colorize the art.

This next step is very important. Immediately after convert the objects to Grayscale, choose the Eyedropper tool. Click on any part of the illustration to grab a swatch of the color. Drag this swatch to the Color list drop box like shown in the animation above.

This will not only define the tint of the gray you chose, but will also define the base color (100k) it came from in the color list.

Now we are ready to colorize the art.

There are two ways to accomplish creating a monotone.

The easiest way is to simply drag a predefined color from the color list on top of the base color, like shown above. This replaces the base color as well as re-colors all the tints regardless if they are defined or not.

There, now we have a nice monotone. If you have a Spot Pantone color and just want to use that, then the next technique will help.

If you have a defined Pantone Spot color and drag it on the base black color, you'll end up creating a mix of CMYK values for the new color like shown above. This would not be good for separation later.

Instead we'll use that great tool, Graphic Find & Replace. Just choose the black color for the "From" attribute and use the Pantone color for the "To" attribute.

Hit the Change button and you'll convert all the objects to tints of the Pantone color. You can then safely remove all instances of the Black color you started with.

To test to make sure you've removed all other colors from the objects, go into the Xtras menu -> Colors -> Name all Colors. You should see a list of tints based on the Pantone color show up.