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Using and saving colors to the Swatches Panel.

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. 
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  • 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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