How to Move Your Color Swatches from Photoshop to Illustrator or InDesign


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 One

As 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 Two

You 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.

Turbo Boost

You can use the Eyedropper tool (I) to sample colors from all areas of your screen (not just an active document). Just click within a document first, and then drag outside of that window with the Eyedropper onto the object you'd like to sample.


According to Adobe's help file, you cannot share the following types of swatches between applications: patterns, gradients, and the Registration swatch from Illustrator or InDesign; or book color references, HSB, XYZ, duotone, monitorRGB, opacity, total ink, and webRGB swatches from Photoshop. These types of swatches are automatically excluded when you save swatches for exchange, so be careful. If you don't see a color swatch you saved in one CS2 application when you open another CS2 application, that could be why.


Step Three

When 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.

Turbo Boost

Use the Direct Selection tool (A) to drag an element from an InDesign layout to Bridge and it'll turn into a "snippet" and be saved in an INX (InDesign Exchange) format where it can be dragged into any InDesign layout. You can even email snippets to others.


Step Four

Open 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?

One thing that could put a damper on your swatch-sharing bliss is the color settings. The swatches will be exactly the same across all applications as long as the color settings are synchronized. See the first tutorial in this chapter to find out how to do this.


Turbo Boost

If you click on an InDesign file in Bridge, look toward the bottom of the Metadata palette. You can actually see what fonts and color swatches the InDesign file uses.




Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic
The Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic: Automating Photoshop to Get Twice the Work Done in Half the Time
ISBN: 0321441656
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 113

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