Defining Colors | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

InDesign comes with a few predefined colors: black, registration (black on each negative for the printing press), paper (white), none (transparent), cyan, magenta , yellow, red, green, and blue. So you'll likely want to add a few of your own.

Before you can apply any colors ‚ whether to bitmap images or to layout elements such as strokes, text, frames , and shapes ‚ you must first define the colors. But before you can define colors, you have a couple decisions to make first:

Do you want to create your own color by mixing basic colors like red, green, and blue (called RGB and typically used for screen display), or cyan, yellow, magenta, and black (called CMYK or process colors, and typically used for printing presses)?
Do you want to use a color from an ink maker like Pantone or Toyo? These colors ‚ called spot colors ‚ are typically used as an extra ink on your document but can also be converted to the standard four colors and so are handy when you'll know the color you want when you see it.

The answer will tell you where you need to go to create your new color. Figure 8-1 shows the two panes for creating and choosing colors: the Colors pane and the Swatches pane, accessible for future use.

Figure 8-1: The two panes for creating and selecting colors: the Swatches pane (top) and the Color pane (bottom).

Note ‚

If no document is open when you create, edit, or delete colors, the new color palette becomes the default for all future documents.

You can change the appearance of the entries in the Swatches pane by using the three options in the Swatches pane's palette menu: Name (the default), Small Name (a tighter list view), Small Swatch (no names, just small icons), and Large Swatch (no names , just larger icons). Also, use the Hide Options menu to suppress display of the Stroke, Fill, Formatting Affects Container, and Formatting Affects Text buttons and the Tint field and pop-up menu; Show Options brings them back.

Creating colors

To create your own color, go to the Swatches pane (Window ‚ Swatches or F5) and select New Color Swatch from the palette menu. You'll get the New Color Swatch dialog box shown in Figure 8-2. Now follow these steps:

Figure 8-2: The New Color Swatch dialog box lets you define colors. (At top is the dialog box for CMYK color mixing; at bottom is the dialog box for the swatch-based Pantone colors.) An identical dialog box named Swatch Options lets you edit them.

In the Swatch Name field, give your color a name that describes it, such as Lime Green or Bright Purple.

You can also check Name with Color Value, which uses the color values to make up the color name, as done for the first three colors under [Registration] in Figure 8-1. But this option is available only for CMYK, RGB, and LAB colors, not for swatch-based colors such as Pantone.

Tip ‚

You can name a CMYK, RGB, or LAB color anything you want. To make it easier to remember what a defined color looks like, either use descriptive names (such as Grass Green) or use names based on the color settings (InDesign will do this for you automatically if you select the Name with Color Value check box and have chosen Process as the Color Type). For example, if you create a color in the CMYK model, give it a name based on its mix, such as 55C 0M 91Y 0K for that grass-green color ‚ composed of 55 percent cyan, 0 percent magenta, 91 percent yellow, and 0 percent black. (Believe it or not, this naming convention is how professionals specify colors on paste-up boards .) InDesign's Name with Color Value option would name this color C=55 M=0 Y=91 K=0. The same system applies to the RGB, HSB, and LAB models. That way, you can look at the Swatches pane and immediately tell what color you'll get.

In the Color Type pop-up menu, choose from Process or Spot.

These are covered later in this chapter ‚ leave the color type at Process if you're not sure.
In the Color Mode pop-up menu, choose the mixing system or swatch library (both are considered to be color models ) you will use:
- CMYK: Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, the colors used in professional printing presses and many color printers.
- RGB: Red, green, and blue, the colors used on a computer monitor, for CD-based or Web-based documents or for some color printers.
- LAB: Luminosity, A axis, B axis, a way of defining colors created by the international standards group Commission Internationale d' ƒ °clairage (the CIE, which translates to International Commission on Illumination in English).
- A swatch-based model: Sets of premixed colors from various vendors , including DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo Ink, and Trumatch for print documents, as well as a Web-specific set and sets specific to Windows and the Mac OS for on-screen documents. InDesign also has the Other Library from which you can select any swatch library file in Adobe Illustrator format.
For the CMYK, RGB, and LAB models, use the sliders to create your new color.

A preview will display in the box at left. For the swatch-based models, scroll through the lists of colors and select one.

If you want to create multiple colors, click Add after each color definition and then click Done when done.

To create just one color, click OK instead of Add. You can also Cancel to abort the current color definition.

New Feature ‚

The Add button in the New Color Swatch, New Tint Swatch, and New Gradient Swatch dialog boxes is new to InDesign CS.

Tip ‚

Because regular black can appear weak when it's overprinted by other colors, many designers create what printers call superblack (also called rich black) by combining 100 percent black and 100 percent magenta. (Some use cyan instead of magenta.) You can define superblack as a separate color or redefine the registration color as 100 percent of all four process colors, and use that as a superblack. Note that superblack should be used only in large areas ‚ using it on type or small objects will increase the chances of registration problems for those items.

The most popular swatch libraries used by professional publishers are those from Pantone, whose Pantone Matching System (PMS) is the de facto standard for most publishers in specifying spot-color inks. The Pantone swatch libraries come in several variations, of which InDesign includes four:

Pantone Process Coated: Use this when you color-separate Pantone colors and your printer uses the standard Pantone-brand process-color inks. (These colors will reproduce reliably when color-separated, while the other Pantone swatch libraries' colors often will not.) Colors in this variant will automatically have the code DS (digital SWOP, or standard web offset printing) prefixed to their names and C (coated) appended.
Pantone Solid Coated: Use this when your printer will use actual Pantone inks (as spot colors) when printing to coated paper stock. Colors in this variant will have the code C (coated) appended to their names.
Pantone Solid Matte: Use this when your printer will use actual Pantone inks (as spot colors) when printing to matte-finished paper stock. Colors in this variant will have the code M (matte) appended to their names.

Pantone Solid Uncoated: Use this when your printer will use actual Pantone inks (as spot colors) when printing to uncoated paper stock. Colors in this variant will have the code U (uncoated) appended to their names.

Note ‚

Unlike InDesign, both PageMaker and QuarkXPress support more Pantone color swatches ‚ such as metallics and pastels ‚ and QuarkXPress also supports the high-fidelity Pantone Hexachrome colors. Check out www.INDDcentral.com for Pantone library sources for InDesign.

Tip ‚

When printing on uncoated paper stock with any colors designed for use on coated stock (which is glossier and shinier), you will usually get weaker, less- saturated color reproduction. That's because the colors designed for uncoated stock are a little richer to make up for the fact that some of the ink gets absorbed into the paper. In uncoated stock, there is much less absorption because the coating acts as a barrier . A matte finish is not as glossy as coated stock but more glossy than uncoated paper.

The other swatch libraries available in InDesign are

DIC Color: The Dainippon Ink & Chemical library, used mainly in Japan.
Focoltone: A CMYK-based library from Focoltone, used mainly in Asia.
HKS: Used in mainly Germany and other European countries , with variants for industrial printing such as on plastics, it uses various combinations of cyan, magenta, and yellow with black overlays to achieve different shades.
System: InDesign has two system libraries, one for Macs and one for Windows. Both are sets of RGB colors available on all Macs or PCs, for on-screen publications such as CD-based presentations.
Toyo: A spot-color model from Toyo Ink, used mainly in Japan.
Trumatch: A CMYK-based library from Trumatch, used mainly in Europe.

Web: A set of RGB colors that all Mac and PC browsers display consistently, for use in Web documents.

Note ‚

Several of the swatch library names are in all uppercase in InDesign's menus and dialog boxes. That's because they're trademarked names, which some people (such as those at Adobe) like to indicate by using all caps. That's just a convention and means nothing per se.

Tip ‚

Color swatches based on the CMYK colors ‚ such as Focoltone, Pantone Process, and Trumatch ‚ will accurately color-separate and, thus, print accurately on a printing press, since a printing press uses the CMYK colors. Other swatches' colors often do not color-separate accurately, because they are supposed to represent special inks that may have elements like metals and clays designed to give metallic or pastel appearances that simply can't be replicated by combining cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Similarly, some colors (like several hues of orange and green) can't be accurately created using the CMYK colors.

Creating tints

A tint is a shade of a color. InDesign lets you create such tints as separate color swatches, so they're easy to use for multiple items. The process is easy:

In the Swatches pane, just select a color you want to create a tint from.
Using the palette menu, select New Tint Swatch.

You'll get the New Tint Swatch dialog box shown in Figure 8-3.

Figure 8-3: The New Tint Swatch dialog box lets you define colors. A nearly identical dialog box named Swatch Options lets you edit them ‚ the difference is that, when editing, you can change all the other color values, not just the degree of tint.
Use the slider to adjust the tint, or enter a value in the field at right.

Click Add to create another tint from the same base color, then click Done when you're done (or just click OK if you're adding a single tint).

Click Cancel to abort the current tint. Any new tint will have the same name as the original color and the percentage of shading, such as Leaf Green 66%.

Note ‚

You can create a tint from a tint, which can be confusing. Fortunately, InDesign goes back to the original color when letting you create the new tint. Thus, if you select Leaf Green 66% and move the slider to 33%, you'll get a 33 percent tint of the original Leaf Green, not a 33 percent tint of the Leaf Green 66% (which would be equivalent to a 22 percent tint of the original Leaf Green).

Creating mixed colors

InDesign CS offers another type of color: mixed-ink color. Essentially, a mixed-ink color combines a spot color with the default process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to create new color swatches. For example, you could combine 38 percent black with 100 percent Pantone 130C to get a darker version of Pantone 130C (called a duotone, though InDesign doesn't limit you to mixing spot colors with just black, as traditional duotones do).

New Feature ‚

Mixed-ink colors are new to InDesign CS.

The evils of the Color pane's colors

Many people will try to use the Color pane (Window ‚ Color or F6) to define colors, but that's a mistake.

At first, you may not realize you can create colors from the Color pane. It shows a gradation of the last color used and lets you change the tint for that color on the current object. But if you go to the palette menu and choose a color model (RGB, CMYK, or LAB), you'll get a set of mixing controls (refer to Figure 8-1).

So what's the problem? Colors created via the Color pane won't appear in your Swatches pane and so can't be used for other objects. Called unnamed colors because they don't appear anywhere , these can be dangerous for publishers to use. (Adobe added them to InDesign to be consistent with how Illustrator defines colors ‚ a foolish consistency.)

First, you can't modify them later in the Swatches pane if you want to adjust the color for all objects using them.

Second, you can't specify the color to print as a spot color, which you might later decide is how you want to print a particular color. They will print only as process colors and will not show up in the list of colors in the Color pane of the Print dialog box (see Chapter 31 for more details on this).

Fortunately, there is a way to prevent unnamed colors: If you go to the Color pane and modify a color without thinking about it, choose Add to Swatches from the palette menu to add the modified color to the Swatches pane. Of course, if you forget to do this, you'll have an unnamed color, so it's best to think "Swatches pane" when you think about adding or editing colors instead of the more obvious "Color pane." If you do forget, you can use the Add Unnamed Colors menu item in the Swatches pane's palette menu to add the colors to the Swatches pane.

To create a mixed-ink swatch, select the spot color you want to begin with and then choose New Mixed Ink Swatch from the Swatches pane's palette menu. You get the dialog box shown in Figure 8-4, in which you select the percentages of the spot color and any or all of the default process colors you want to mix. You also give the new color a name. Click Add to add another mixed-ink swatch based on the current spot color, then click Done when you're done. If you're creating just one color, click OK instead of Add. You can click Cancel to abort the current mixed-ink color definition.

Figure 8-4: The New Mixed Ink Swatch dialog box lets you mix a selected spot color with any or all of the default process colors to create new shades and variations.

Tip ‚

Be sure to test such mixes by creating a color proof first ‚ they may not look as you expect when actually printed because of how printing presses handle a color overlapping other colors.

There's more to mixed-ink colors than creating them one by one. InDesign lets you create mixed-ink groups, which are a series of colors based on a spot color and one or more default process colors. Figure 8-5 shows the New Mixed Ink Group dialog box, in which you select the colors to mix as you do in the New Mixed Ink Swatch dialog box. This feature is handy to create a palette of colors within a color range.

Figure 8-5: The New Mixed Ink Group dialog box lets you mix a selected spot color with any or all of the default process colors in user -defined increments to create a range of new shades and variations.

But you do more than simply mix the colors. In this dialog box, you specify an initial tint for each color you want to mix, then how many times you want to create a color using it, as well as the increment of color for each creation. This can be confusing, so let's walk through the options in Figure 8-5.

Process Cyan is chosen with an Initial value of 34%, a Repeat setting of 2, and an Increment of 46%. Also chosen is the spot color HKS 03 E, with an Initial value of 67%, a Repeat setting of 3, and an Increment of 10%. This combination will create 12 mixed-ink swatches, as shown in the Swatch Preview section (click Preview Swatches to display the preview colors).

InDesign uses the settings and first mixes 67 percent of HKS 03 E with 34 percent of process cyan. That's one swatch. Then it mixes 67 percent of HKS 03 E with 80 percent of cyan (adding the increment of 46%). It does so one more time, for 100 percent cyan, since there was a Repeat setting of 2 ‚ note that InDesign stops at 100 percent saturation even if the Increment results in a higher number.

So that's three mixed-ink swatches based on 67 percent of HKS 03 E. InDesign now repeats this mixing with the next increment of HKS 03 E (77 percent, based on the Increment value of 10% for that color). That's three more. The process is repeated two more times, one for 97 percent of HKS 03 E and one for 97 percent of HKS 03 E, to meet the Repeat setting of 3.

Tip ‚

To figure out how many swatches will be created using this feature, add 1 to the number in each of the Repeat fields, then multiply the values. In the preceding example, you get 12 ‚ (2+1) ƒ ” (3+1), or 3 ƒ ” 4, or 12. That's because the Repeat setting indicates how many more variations to create in addition to those with the base (Initial) value.