Working with the Swatches palette
You can add colors and gradients to the Swatches palette by dragging them from the Color palette, from the Gradient palette, or from the toolbox Fill and Stroke boxes to the Swatches palette. You can add a pattern to the Swatches palette by dragging it from the artwork or by selecting it and choosing Edit > Define Pattern. (See Creating and working with patterns.) New colors, gradients, or patterns that you create and store in the Swatches palette are associated only with the current file. Each new Adobe Illustrator file can have a different set of swatches stored in its Swatches palette. Swatches stored in the RGB Startup file or CMYK Startup file are loaded into all new Illustrator documents, depending on which color mode you select when you create the new document. (See Creating a custom startup file.)
To choose a color, gradient, or pattern from the Swatches palette: - Choose Window > Swatches.
- Click a color, gradient, or pattern swatch in the Swatches palette. The selected color, gradient, or pattern appears in the Color palette and in the Fill box or Stroke box in the toolbox, and it is applied to any selected object.
To modify the swatch display: - Choose Window > Swatches.
- Choose one of the following display options from the pop-up menu:
- List View displays a small swatch next to the name of the swatch. The icons to the right of the name show the color model (CMYK, RGB, and so on), and whether the color is a spot color, global process color, non-global process color, registration color, or none.
- Small Thumbnail View or Large Thumbnail View displays only the swatch. A triangle with a dot in the corner of the swatch indicates that the color is a spot color. A triangle without a dot indicates a global process color.
To modify the type of swatches displayed: - Choose Window > Swatches.
- Click one of the following buttons at the bottom of the Swatches palette:
- The Show All Swatches button
displays all color, gradient, and pattern swatches. - The Show Color Swatches button
displays only process color and spot color swatches. - The Show Gradient Swatches button
displays only gradient swatches. - The Show Pattern Swatches button
displays only pattern swatches.
To select all swatches not currently used in the file: - Choose Window > Swatches.
- Choose Select All Unused from the pop-up menu. Only swatches that are not currently used in the active file are selected.
To sort swatches by swatch type or by name: - Choose Window > Swatches.
- Choose from the sorting options in the pop-up menu:
- Sort by Name sorts all swatches alphabetically by name.
- Sort by Kind sorts all swatches in ascending order by swatch type: colors, gradients, and patterns.
- Show Find Field displays a text box in the palette, in which you can type the name of the swatch you want to find.
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