One thing that bugged me about working with the same image in Photoshop and Illustrator was my swatches. I'd spend all this time getting my colors in the Swatches palette in Photoshop, only to find that I had to recreate all of the swatches once I was in Illustrator. Thankfully, in CS2 all of the applications can now use a common Swatches palette so you only need to save it once and can use it everywhere. Step OneAs you're working on an image in Photoshop, open the Swatches palette (Window>Swatches). Click on the Foreground swatch in the Toolbox to bring up the Color Picker, and set your Foreground color to any color that you want to add to the Swatches palette. Then choose New Swatch from the Swatches palette's flyout menu. Give your swatch a name and click OK. Build your Swatches palette this way for any swatches that you want to use in another program, such as Illustrator. ©MATT KLOSKOWSKI Step TwoYou can remove any unwanted swatches from the palette by Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) on the swatch and choosing Delete Swatch from the contextual menu. This will clean up your swatches so you only share swatches that you really need.
Step ThreeWhen you've got your Swatches palette set up with the colors you want to share, just select Save Swatches for Exchange from the Swatches palette's flyout menu. Choose a location that's easy to remember so you don't have to search for the swatch file later.
Step FourOpen Illustrator CS2. In the Swatches palette, from the flyout menu, choose Open Swatch Library, and scroll to the bottom to Other Library. Find the ASE file that you just saved in Step Three, select it, and click Open. That's it! You've now loaded the same exact color swatches you used in Photoshop into Illustrator. How's that for saving time?
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