Swatch Libraries

As you undoubtedly will have noticed, the “Swatches” panel also has a library.
This library, like all other libraries in Illustrator, is divided into categories and subcategories (1).
When you click a category or subcategory, it opens this panel (2) with the different colors in this category. If you want to use a color from a category in your document, drag it from the category to the “Swatches” panel.
As you see, these different colors in turn are further divided into groups. You can see the folder icon (3) that represents this group of colors.
If you wish to use a whole group of colors in your document, click the folder icon for these colors. This puts the whole group with colors in the “Swatches” panel.
At the bottom of the panel of the color category you still have the menu (4), with which you can navigate between the different categories and subcategories.

 

Create Category

If you have made a number of colors that you wish to place in a homemade category, click the button with the downward pointing arrow in the title bar (1) of the “swatches” panel.
From the pop-up menu that appears (2) choose “Save Swatch Library as ASE” or “Save Swatch Library as AI” (3).
The first allows you to use this sample library in eg Photoshop or InDesign also. The second will save this only in Illustrator.

I’ll give an example.

You have received an order from a customer for a number of documents.
For example, a poster, a flyer and a business card.
In all these various documents, the same colors occur and also nothing other than certain colors.
The first thing we do is create a new document.
Then you remove all colors from the “Swatches” panel. These are obsolete anyway, so they just stand in our way.

Just click the downward pointing arrow in the title bar (1) of the panel, “Swatches” and choose “Select All Unused” in the drop-down menu.
This selects all colors in the panel. Drag it all to the trash icon.
There remain a number, such as red and black, you can drag it into the trash.

This gives us a blank “Swatches” panel.

 

Then we make the colors and we place it in the “Swatches” panel.

I will show you how to do this for already-made objects.

Select all objects in your document. The hotkey for this is Ctrl A on your keyboard.
Click the “New Color Group” button at the bottom of the panel (1) and in the dialog that appears (2) you give the group a name and select the boxes “Selected Artwork”, “Convert Process to Global” and “Include Swatches for Tints”.
Click the OK button.
And the group of colors is included in the “Swatches” panel (3).

To place this group in its own category, click thebutton with the downward pointing arrow in the title bar of the “Swatches” pane.

And choose “Save Swatch Library as AI” from the pop-up menu that appears.
In the “Save Swatches as a library” dialog that appears, type a name for your category and click the “Save” button.

 

Now click the “Swatch Libraries Menu”, you will see the newly created category (2) under “User Defined” (1).
Open a new document or an existing document, it does not matter, you can use this category everywhere.

The only thing you still need to do is to open that category and place it in the ‘Swatches’ pane by clicking the folder icon.

 

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