Saving custom colours in a custom list—not to swatcheses

[SamSteele]

I have been working on a print doc and using the same few colours. Is there any way to save a custom palette or list of the colours I use over and over again (apart from saving to the swatch dialogue)? And  to give them custom names so I can reuse them, export them and import them?

Tks.

[Aammppaa]

Is there a reason you don't want to use a swatch?

You can give colours in a swatch a custom name, and import / export them.

If you create an Application Palette rather than a Document Palette is will be available in every document you create.

But if you really don't want to use the Swatches panel for some reason, you could use Assets, or simply have a file of coloured rectangles.

[SamSteele]

Well, you've given me some good hints to follow, thanks. I now have a document palette with 65 colours in it, most of which I have never used before (not the one illustrated below). Swatches tell me nothing. It was so much simpler in InDesign to make a custom list/palette of colours. These long lists of options and switches don't make for a user-friendly UI.  Anyway, I will try to find a tutorial on the whole colour thing. Again, thanks for trying to help.

[Kimbo]

If you are on the swatch tab, then on the far right side is an option menu, go to appearance and to list.

[transitdiagrams]

As stated above you might want to use the "Add Applicication Palette" function so you can set up collections of your most used colors and use it in all documents. 

off topic: being able to group colors within a palette would be a nice feature though.

[SamSteele]

16 hours ago, Kimbo said:

If you are on the swatch tab, then on the far right side is an option menu, go to appearance and to list.

Now I see what my dilemma was: the option menu above only shows up if you are working in the SWATCHES tab. I was working with the COLOR tab using CMYK sliders and clicking on the options menu icon just gives you this (below). It would be nice if the full options list (above) showed up from the color tab, too.

 

[SamSteele]

13 hours ago, ChrisSmere said:

As stated above you might want to use the "Add Applicication Palette" function so you can set up collections of your most used colors and use it in all documents. 

off topic: being able to group colors within a palette would be a nice feature though.

Yes, that would be very handy if I was an in-house designer working with a fixed set of colours. Or drawing cartoons or graphic novels. I'll give it a try to see how it works across pubs.

[SamSteele]

23 hours ago, ChrisSmere said:

...

off topic: being able to group colors within a palette would be a nice feature though.

Chris, you can group colours by renaming them with a number prefix in LIST view. If you then sort the list by alphabet the numbered colours will group themselves. E.g. nos. 00 to 09, 10 to 19,  20 to 29, etc. will group together.  If you have a lot of entries in one number group, try 100, 200, 300 etc. Remember that single digit numbers start with "0" (zero).

Since new colours are added at the top of the list you may have to switch from alphabet to color and back again to get the numbered colours in proper sequence (ascending only).

[Petar Petrenko]

On 6/14/2019 at 3:04 AM, SamSteele said:

Well, you've given me some good hints to follow, thanks. I now have a document palette with 65 colours in it, most of which I have never used before (not the one illustrated below). Swatches tell me nothing. It was so much simpler in InDesign to make a custom list/palette of colours. These long lists of options and switches don't make for a user-friendly UI.  Anyway, I will try to find a tutorial on the whole colour thing. Again, thanks for trying to help.

Yes, "Colors", "Grays" are useless. Only "Global Colors" and "Global Gradients"  named by percentage of color would be enough, beside spot color libraries.