When working in Adobe Illustrator, you will find yourself using the same colors over and over again.
Saving them in the Swatches panel is a good way to keep track of colors (especially brand colors) and work more efficiently.
In this mini tutorial, we will cover the basics of saving a swatch in Illustrator.
Here’s how to do it:
Save a new sample
- Open your Illustrator project file
- Select or create an object with the desired color
- With the object selected, open the Swatches panel (Window > Swatches).
- From the hamburger menu at the top right of the Samples pane, select New Sample.
- Create a name for the new swatch and select whether it is a process color or a spot color*, and select the color mode
Pro Tip: Make sure that the«Global» checkbox is selected when creating a new sample. This will allow you to edit the swatch later if necessary, and all objects using that color will be updated as well.
Editing a color swatch
- To edit an existing color swatch, simply double-click on the swatch (in the Swatches Panel), and the Swatch Options panel will open.
- Edit settings and click OK
- If you are editing a global color swatch, all shapes and text using that color swatch will be updated accordingly.