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Swatches and Gradients

so we're talking about. We're using this watches and assigning color, but I want to give you some swatch and color basics. We're not going to go into everything again. I don't mean to keep pointing to the essentials tool, but we did kind of dive into really how to work with the color balance that air here. But they should. I did, of course. A couple weeks ago, that was an in design taster, a taster flight like, you know, you get beer flights and they give you just a little bit of each of five fears. And that's kind of what I want you to have here is like, I kind of like that or I want to learn more about texts. All order, the big, you know, the growler later, the big you know, jug of it later, or something like that. You know, I think I'd like to work on color a little bit. Well, maybe I'll order the 20 ounce or the pint glass or something later, right? So just kind of give you an idea of each thing and kind of see what you can do. But there's so much to learn. An illustrator there jus...

t so you could go so deep in some of this stuff. But I want to make sure that when you go to make something you're not stuck making just whatever color was there by default, because I want you to feel like you can branch out and you're not limited to at least these colors that are here. So I opened up the swatches panel. I'm also gonna open up with the color panel and pull that off is well, pull this guy off and they were kind of hand in hand. And again, there's my transform panel that keeps popping up every time I create a rectangle. So the color panel and I'm gonna pull this little button down here at the bottom who stretched that you can get a bigger color spectrum toe work, and it's just a little easier to click things with the eyedropper tool that way. So I'm also going to just sit and decide if I want to see my Korg be remember. I told it print in the very beginning, so it automatically assumes I'm working in our seem like a which is great if I suddenly start looking rgb I have so many colors to choose from. If I go to print, it's going to take that RGB color and change it to see him like a which if everybody has ever seen where their colors get darker. When they go to print and they get mad, it's because I got this vibrant yellow on screen. Well, I can't print that vibrant yellow, so I have to go to the next best thing. So I'm gonna make sure this isn't seem like a so I'm ready for print and I can choose a color just by sliding through her and you notice it's changing it down in the tool panel. But I like to have a big item on screen, so as soon as I make a color, I can actually see what it's doing. I can say, OK, I get it. I can see all that color that we have in here, so I just go along until I find a color I like. And even if I don't know if I'll use it again, I like it. So I'm gonna go ahead and go up to the panel menu the color panel menu and say, create new Swatch so I want to create a new swatch, and I wanted to appear over here so that I can use that lime green again instead of using the built in colors. And I have a couple different options. First thing is to name it, it automatically wants to name it by the value. I don't want to do that. So let's call that lime green and it's set up for process color. If you're not printing in spot color, you're just gonna work on screen or you gonna print for color digital. Leave it a process color and these air the mixes. So this is the color the mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black that it put together. I don't need to worry about this. I don't need to worry about the values unless I know I'm working with corporate colors that I need to be a certain mix. I'm not gonna worry about it. I'm just mixing colors to my heart's content because I know I'm going digital. I'm gonna do some digital color copying, and I could basically have any color in the c m y que spectrum, So that's great. I'm like in a playground now I could just play with whatever I want. So I believe the color moated C n y que and the only other thing I'm gonna do is tell it global when I change it to global. That means any time I've assigned to this line green when I go and change the values of lime green, it's going to update in all the places that I assigned that lime green. If I don't tell it, it's global. That's not gonna happen. It's gonna be a standalone thing. So global is good, and global also lets me choose tints of colors. So if I want to start giving it a 20% or 30% tip a tent, I want to have the full range of tints of this green color. I need to make it global a swell right. So I was gonna tell it. Okay. And now when I go over to my swatches panel, look over here, I have this little cutouts. He looks there's a little like a notch cut out of it. That means that it's global. You know, Cesaire, not global. These air set up global. And when I roll over it, it does say lime green. Now I could work with it in names if I want. Instead, I can come over here to my swatch options and come. I'm sorry. I do not want to do that. I want to do my panel options and latte is on the different views Over here. I've got thumbnail views and I've got list for use. Let's do large list views. So now we can at least see the name still having to roll over it. I can also see a couple other things. I can come in here and I can see that this is a four color global Colors is global, and I have four color. So is done in C m Y k. I could see if my colors were done. An RGB. I might want to change those Aiken double click on them at any time. And I could say, Oh, change this toe rgb and it's gonna change it to the closest values. That's probably not gonna be problem. It's when you go the other direction, it can get some faded. Some faded changes in the 10th. It there. Right, So I made that I made that global the great thing is when I changed that, you know, it's now this color spectrum is basically all shades of this lime green, says the tint ramp. I could just sit there and try and hit the right tint. I don't know what percentage that is. I'm going up to the panel menu instead and make sure show options is turned on because again, it left part of it out. I can pull this down so I have more of that ramp toe work with. But I can come in here and just say, Well, now I would like a swash that it's 50% off that green, all right? And because what's because I have this selected, it changed. I might not have actually wanted to do that, but I like to see on screen when things change. So I'm gonna go ahead to the panel menu and I'm gonna go ahead and say, Create new Swatch. So again I'm gonna create new Swatch it created right underneath. But the great thing is because one is based on the other there still linked together. So if I double click on lime green, that's it. Let me select this item first and choose lime green I'm gonna de selected. So anything else I touch her work on isn't being applied to that square. And I'm going to go ahead and actually want to make this 50% right. So we'll double click on Long green and I'm going to make some changes to that. It's gonna be not so Lime green is gonna be a darker green When I say OK, you notice it changed. The tint changed as well as the one I changed because they're linked together. So if I make 10 2030 40% off this color, it's a green. But I changed the way the green looks. I don't have to go change all those tents as well, which would be a pain cause I'd have to really start all over again. I can change one, and they all ripple down underneath something sense. That's a great way to keep your color managed just as far as that goes. Eso I could also create grading. It's so let's do that. And it's like this here and one of the options that I have done here are different colors that'll show so I can show all my swatches which is what it's doing right now. So I have solid swatches and I also have down at the bottom. Should have some grade. Ian's here. Here's some Grady INTs, right? So I can kind of see that it goes from blue to nothing. That's what the checkerboard pattern is. We're used to that from photo shop, and I have some that just go through different oranges and yellows, black toe white. So that's white as opposed to transparent. And this is one that's like a vignette that goes on top of that. That's a radial blur. And so our radio ingredient. And so it goes from nothing and fades in tow black, so I can choose to just show my Grady INTs if I want. So I'm just gonna show my Grady in swatches. I also want a list of those as a list you so I can see those, and I want to assign a Grady int. So I'm gonna start with his black and white Grady in. So I've got this item selected when a sign that so I've got that black and white radiant. Now if I want to make changes to that particular Grady and I can or can start from scratch. But I like to use one that's already there, especially if I wanted something complex like that, you know, are sometimes you've got one that have five different colors in it and just nice little graduation between each of them. I might start with one and then just change the colors. Let's go back to the black and white, though, double click on that and I'm not double click on that. I'm gonna ask for her to the Grady in Tool, and I'm going to work with the greatest tool in that respect. So if I double click on the radiant tool, it brings up the radiant panel and it shows me, let me actually pull this off so it's kind of in the way of that other. We're not seeing both of them. I have a type of grading to choose from either linear or radio, so either goes in straight lines or it radiates out from point. I also have here. These are my radiance that I have in my document, but I want to create a new one, and basically what this is telling me is that it's going from white toe black and the transition happens halfway in between. And that's pretty much by default. But I can change that. I can click on this little color, Uh, stop here and suddenly I have my colors to choose from. But I probably want to make sure that I have my swatches instead. So I want to actually double click on that. I want my swatches to come up. Why my swatches not coming up? Here we go. Sorry, this is just picking from the color picker and here's picking from this watches. So there's all my swatches. Let's actually make it go from Let's go ahead and make it go from white. That's fine, but we're gonna make it go to her green instead. Some double click on that on my swatches. Go to that green we just made. And now I've got the grading going from white to green. I can also tell it that I wanted to be a little more on the white side than green, so I just change the top. And that's the transition between the two. If I wanted to, I could even add another color. I just click down below. Now I have 1/3 color, and then each one is divided in half and again. I could play with the sliders, so it's double click on this. And maybe we put some brown in the middle of it, goes from white to brown to green, like over here, and just change where that transition happens, a little more green, a little more white, and we can go ahead and change that. Then when I could do is with that Grady and Tools still selected, I can either try and grab these this item. This tells me where the radiant starts. I find that feel more difficult trying to pull those items across. I just click and drag and say, All right, I'd like the radio or the Grady it to go that way so I could just click each way I wanted to go. If I go from corner to corner from edge to edge, you notice it takes up the whole white to brown to green. But if I make a shorter line, that transition happens in a very compact way, and from that end out it justice solid. Whatever the end colors were, get some really interesting effects. Maybe I don't want a lot of white actually start that outside of the frame so that the white is actually happening way back here. So make sense. So a little bit of the great aunt those ingredient fills. There's a lot of stuff we could do with radiance, but we're not gonna go into too much. What I'm gonna do is bring back my swatches and I want to show all my swatches and gonna go ahead and give that just a I'm just gonna go and give it a white Phil. But what I want to do is a sign, a stroke. And I want to put a Grady int on the stroke. So that's kind of a cool effect that weaken Dio. So I'm gonna come back to my, uh, to my swatches here and find the black and white one that we started with Scroll up here. Don't go white to black and whips, not on the pill. I wanted to have that on the stroke instead. So it's come back to the Grady INTs watch here and say white to black. And now I've got a great Viant going across that particular line. Now there's a couple different things I could do with the Grady int. If you notice once I'm on a stroke, it tells me here, What is it? How is the Grady int moving along the stroke so I can have it going within the stroke Or I can have it go along the stroke. So it basically started from here. Here's the white as it gets darker and darker, so follow the path of the stroke or I can have a go across the stroke. So it's the great it happens across the width of the stroke. That gives you a nice kind of three d look to it, right? So we have a little bit of a three D look, too. It's not exactly three D, but the nice thing is, I could choose how it how it actually is applied on the stroke itself. So great it's on the stroke is actually I think, pretty cool. I don't remember when they introduced that. When they did, I just thought it was the greatest thing. So all right, so that's kind of radiance and strokes and you're able to make again. I haven't gone over everything in color. I could probably talk for three hours on color, and nobody wants that, Really. But if you do want it, it is available in the essentials. I don't know if I took that long, but I talked quite a while on it. But one of the things in the colors that we could make color groups. I'm not gonna go into that. I just want to point out that you could make groups of colors so that their make a little more sense instead of just having all these colors grouped together as is. But it's pretty easy. You create a color here, you add it to your swatches, create new swatch, and then it's there for you tease again. Making it global means if I make a change to it, not only does it update, but any tents that I've created on top of it also update as well. Do we have questions on color either? Here online, we actually do have quite a few questions. Okay, so I just want to run a couple quick ones. Okay? We're starting to run out of time here, but everybody again. Erica taught a two day full essentials class on illustrator. If you are loving today and want to take it to the next level so we can start here in the room. No, you're good. All right, let's see. Can you just explain what, um, what cooler is and how do you access that cooler? Yeah, cooler is a way to create colored groups and color palettes, and it's a community, and it's an online thing that there is a panel for it, and you begin to your adobe, I d with it. And you can create these different groups of color and you're able to download them and bring them into your your adobe documents that way. So you might go out and say someone else made this palette of colors that you know, I'm really bad at trying to pick out colors that go together. But when I see combinations, I know which ones I liked. So I'll go out and grab those and download those and use those as well, so I would definitely check into. There's a lot of good adobe TV stuff on line for the cooler, and it's k u l E r. Correct, K A L E r. It's just fun to play around with. It is that it's those making the color combination. Exactly. I don't think that other people make them. And I'm like, Yes, those are the ones those colors I love. I didn't know I love those together. But those are the ones. Exactly. Exactly. Alright. And just one more person, really. What does spot color actually mean? Spot color is when you're doing offset printing. So you're actually printing on a printing press. If people are still doing that? No, there's lots of people. They're still doing that. Basically, what's popular is is instead of having all four colors C M Y A N k being printed. That's still pretty expensive if you're doing short run printing. But a spot color might be that I want to have, let's say, a purple and black business card. So they're gonna put blacking on the press and they're gonna put a jar of purple ink. The color is going to be not created by C m. Y que being mixed together. It's gonna be I want purple number 2 66 pants on to 66. They're going to get a jar of ink that is Pantone to 66. There, put down the press, So it's gonna print black and it's gonna print that purple A swell. So that's what a spot color is is that it's a standalone color on its own plate on a printing press. If you're not printing offset printing, don't even worry about it cause you're never going to use that you're gonna use process color.