Applying Colors

When you draw an object in Illustrator, it is in black / white by default. Black for the edge, white for the fill color.
To change this, you have several options.
What you always do is to select the object (A).
Then you have the choice.
You choose a color from the color picker, for the padding or border, on the Options bar (1).
Or you choose a color from the color picker for filling or edge, click in the “Appearance” panel (2).
In both cases, this opens a color palette (3).
But where does Illustrator get these colors?
Well you can find them in the “Swatches” panel (4).

 

Create Color

If you do not find the color you wish in the color palette, you can create a color.

This can also be done in various ways.

One way is to open the “Color” window (5).

In the “Color” window, we have different ways to identify a color.
You can do this with the sliders (a) under the colors R, G, B, which stand for Red, Green, Blue.
Or you can type the values in the adjacent section (b).
Or you can choose a color in the spectrum color bar below (c).

The color settings, in this case RGB, depend on which option you chose when you created this document.
If you selected the CMYK color mode when you created the document, then it would have listed the CMYK colors.

Do not panic, you can always change this, if needed, by clicking on the color spectrum bar (c) with the Alt Shift keys on your keyboard pressed.

If you have no color, click the white square with the red stripe.

 

Save or Delete Color

If you made a color that you want to use later in your document, you must save it in the “Swatches” panel.
Click and drag this color made from the “Color” pane to “Swatches” panel (1).
This adds the color to the panel (2).
If you want to delete, click and drag it to the trash-icon at the bottom of the “Swatches” panel (3).
If you wish to remove all unused colors in your document from “Swatches” panel, click the downward pointing arrow in the title bar (a) and choose “Select All Unused”.
This will select all unused colors in your document in the “Swatches” panel.
Then click the trash icon at the bottom of “Swatches” panel.

Another way to save a color is the “New Swatch” button at the bottom of “Swatches” panel.
This opens a dialog box “New Swatch”, in which you can set the colors in the same way that you saw above, and especially, give a name to your color.
Always easy when something has a name. Isn’t it?
Click the “OK” button and your color will also be added to the “Swatches” panel.

If have added or removed your colors from the “Swatches” panel, this is only valid for the document in which you have made these changes.

This means that when you open a different document, the standard colors are still present in the “Swatches” panel.

You can change a color in the “Swatches” panel by double-clicking.
This opens the “Swatch Options” dialog, where you can change the color and the “Swatch” name.

Attention!

When you change a color in the “Swatches” panel, this color is not used automatically when it is used by one other object in your document.
You will need to select the object again and just change it to the modified color in the “Swatches” panel.

If you however wish that this is done automatically, you should check the “Global” (1) in the “New Swatch” dialog.

A saved color set as “Global”, can be identified by the white triangle (2) at the bottom right of the color icon.

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