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About this lesson
Using and saving colors to the Swatches Panel.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Swatches - Instructions.docx58.9 KB Swatches - Exercise.ai
1.1 MB Swatches - Exercise Solution.ai
1.6 MB
Quick reference
Swatches
Using and saving colors to the Swatches Panel.
When to use
Swatches are great if you ever want to save a set of custom colors or if you wanted to be able to share a color file with someone to ensure consistency.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the 'Swatches - Exercise.ai' file.
- Create a shape on the canvas using any of the Shape Tools.
- Open the Swatches Panel on the right side of the Illustrator interface.
- Click on the hamburger menu at the top right of the Swatches Panel (the icon that looks like four lines stacked on top of each other).
- Go down to the bottom and choose 'Open Swatch Library' before selecting 'Other Library'
- Navigate to the GoSkills_Swatches_Library.ase file found in the exercise folder and load the custom library.
- Use the newly loaded swatches to change the fill and/or stroke color of your shape.
Hints & tips
- You can add colors to existing swatch libraries and save them as a new .ase file to continue to build upon existing libraries.
- 00:05 Now that we've looked at one way that you guys can change color with basic shapes,
- 00:09 I'd like to show you another way to do this.
- 00:11 So I'm going to grab my shape tool and
- 00:13 just drag out a square while holding down the Shift key.
- 00:17 Now the first thing I wanna do is toggle between my stroke and fill, so
- 00:20 I'm gonna hold down Shift and press X.
- 00:23 So that now I have swapped my colors, so I have a black square with a white outline.
- 00:28 And now that our outline is in front, we can choose None for the stroke.
- 00:33 Now from here, what I want to do is come over back to our panels, and
- 00:36 we're gonna open the Swatches panel.
- 00:38 Now swatches are great, and it's a really helpful and
- 00:40 useful way to save your colors.
- 00:42 So as I showed you guys early on, you can easily kind of add swatches or
- 00:47 create a swatch folder from this panel.
- 00:51 So if I make sure that my fill color is in front,
- 00:53 I can grab any of these fill colors that I like.
- 00:57 But I can also create a new group folder, and
- 01:01 I can easily add swatches, remove swatches, and create custom swatches.
- 01:08 So if I just pick a random color here, I can add this to my new group.
- 01:14 And let's say I wanted to have an outline now, so
- 01:18 I can double-click on my outline, I can pick a color from here.
- 01:22 And then once I have that color, if I like it, I can also drag it from here and
- 01:27 add it to my new group.
- 01:30 So you don't have to create groups solely from previously created swatches.
- 01:35 But you can also use your color picker or the eye dropper or anything to
- 01:41 basically sample other colors, before adding them to your swatches groups.
- 01:48 Now one of the other nice features about this is that, let's say I had
- 01:52 a lot more colors in here in my folder, or if I wanted to save this entire group.
- 01:58 What I could do, I could grab this whole folder here,
- 02:02 come to this menu on the top-right that looks like three or four stacked lines,
- 02:06 and I can choose Save Swatch Library as ASE, okay?
- 02:11 And what this is going to ask me for is where I wanna save this, so
- 02:15 I need to make sure that I'm in the right folder here.
- 02:17 But if I go into Applications > Adobe Illustrator, and so
- 02:21 forth, I can save it in here.
- 02:23 But for right now, I'm just going to save it on my Desktop, so
- 02:27 that I can show you guys how this can work.
- 02:31 Hit OK, and now if I create a new document,
- 02:36 You'll see that I basically have my previous set of folders here.
- 02:40 But I can come back up to that same menu, and choose Open Swatch Library >
- 02:45 Other Library, or User Defined, and I can select them from here.
- 02:52 And now I'll basically have, pretty much looks the same, except for
- 02:56 the group folder here, okay?
- 02:58 So I can easily save and load a swatch library with all of my preset colors.
- 03:04 So that's really helpful, especially if you need to hand off some files, and
- 03:08 you wanna make sure that people are using the correct colors,
- 03:11 you can set up your swatches over here.
- 03:14 Another cool thing that you can do is to actually choose the kinds of swatches.
- 03:17 If you only wanna see the colors and not the gradients, or
- 03:21 if you only wanna view gradients but not solid colors.
- 03:25 That's the easy way to kinda filter out everything, or
- 03:28 you can just choose Show All Swatches, okay?
- 03:31 And you can also do you other things here, like show Swatch Options, and
- 03:35 that'll give you this color breakdown, okay?
- 03:39 But you could also come over here to your Swatch Libraries Menu.
- 03:43 And this is what I showed you guys very early on,
- 03:46 just the different types of kind of preset swatches that you can use.
- 03:50 And as I pick some of these, it's going to add them over here to my swatches, okay?
- 03:55 Because I don't have the shape actually selected yet it's not going to apply it.
- 03:59 But once it is selected I can easily just kind of toggle through and
- 04:05 select any of this presets, okay?
- 04:07 So let's say I wanted to open another one, like Metal, okay?
- 04:11 Well now have all this metallic themed swatches,
- 04:14 that I can just try out and test.
- 04:17 And if I found some in here that I liked,
- 04:20 I could always add them to my own custom folder before saving it out.
- 04:26 So that's another way that you guys can use colors, using the Swatches panel.
- 04:30 Along with creating a custom folder that you can then save and
- 04:34 load back up into a new document.
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