Swatches (F5)

The Swatches panel or the colors panel is the main place to define colors or swatches for your objects. You can change colors or define custom colors based on the objective of your document. You can define and select any CMYK or RGB color.

  • Go to the window menu
  • Click on color
  • Select swatches

Edit color

  • Right-click on the color and select Swatch Options
  • This opens the Swatch Options dialog box.
  • You can manually adjust the CMYK /RGB values to get the target color you want.
  • In the Color Type dropdown menu, there are two options – Process and Spot.
    •  Process is used when working with on-screen documents and is usually the default.
    • Spot is used if you want to define colors for printing.

In addition to editing an existing swatch, you can also create new swatches with the appropriate color values.

In addition to the Swatches panel, you can also use the Color panel to select and define colors.

The Color panel can be invoked by going to the Window menu, then to the Color submenu and finally selecting the Color panel or simply press F6 on the keyboard.

When you open the Color panel, you can choose if you want it to display either the Lab, CMYK or RGB color space.

The bottom of the color panel shows the tint ramp (if it’s a single color) or the Lab, CMYK or RGB spectrum. Hovering over this tint ramp or spectrum, turns the cursor into the Eyedropper tool, which you can use to select the desired color.

You can play around with the Color panel just like you would on the Swatches panel but make sure you add color to your existing swatch collection by clicking Add to Swatches in the Color panel options. Doing so, will enable you to reuse the color within, as well as outside the document. Otherwise, it might be difficult to exactly reuse the same color as the color selection from the Color panel is unnamed.

Gradient

  • Go to the window menu
  • Click on color
  • Select Gradient
  • Open swatches (F5)
  • Drag required color from swatches menu to gradient panel
  • Click on show gradient swatches from color panel (at bottom of panel), gradient panel will open
  • Click on new swatches, now your new created gradient color will appear on gradient swatches.
  • Or
  • Create an empty gradient swatch by going to the options of the Swatches panel
  • Selecting New Gradient Swatch and click Ok.
  • Right-click the new gradient swatch,
  • Select Swatch Options to open the Gradient Options dialog box.
  • Default gradient color is from white to black.

Clicking the first stop (the small white icon) in the Gradient Ramp allows you to define the CMYK color which you want as the starting point of the gradient.

You can also change this to RGB to Lab by selecting the appropriate option from the Stop Color dropdown menu.

The Stop Color dropdown menu also allows you to select an existing swatch as your gradient color.

You can also add a multi-stop gradient by clicking the Gradient Ramp. If you notice, you will see a diamond shaped handle on top of the Gradient Ramp. That allows you to define the extent of the gradient.

If you want to remove any of the gradient stops, click and drag the stop out of the ramp.