InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Swatches Palette

We recommend that you use the Swatches palette to create and edit your colors. The advantage of creating named colors here is that, as in QuarkXPress, it makes it easier for you or your service provider to globally change the colors in your document later on, should that be necessary.

The Swatches palette in InDesign looks somewhat similar to XPress's Color palette. If it's not open, choose the Swatches palette from the Window menu, or press F5 (see Chapter 81).

There are four built-in swatches which always appear in the Swatches palette and which can't be removed: None, Black, Registration, and Paper. The first three are the same as XPress; the last, Paper, simulates the paper color on which you're printing. By default, Paper is the same as XPress's "White" color, but you can double-click on the swatch to edit its composition if you're going to print on non-white stock. (It is for on-screen preview only, and will not print.)

InDesign also includes swatches for cyan, yellow, magenta, red, green, and blue. These are the same as XPress, but with one important difference: Unlike XPress, these red, green, and blue swatches are defined as true process colors, so it's okay to use them. (They're RGB colors in XPress.)

Creating Swatches

To create a new color, choose New Color Swatch from the palette's flyout menu. This opens the New Color Swatch dialog box (see Figure 79-2). A faster way of opening the dialog is to select any color other than None or Paper and then Option/Alt-click the New Swatch button on the palette. Here you can name your swatch, choose its color model, and specify whether the color is process or spot. When editing the color composition, you can either drag the sliders or type values. For process colors the default is to name colors by their color components, but if you turn off the Name with Color Value option, you can give a color any name.

Beware: If an object is selected on your page when you create a swatch, InDesign automatically applies the color to it. This makes David crazy, so he tries to remember to press Command-Shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A to deselect all objects before creating a color.

Tint Swatches

InDesign lets you create swatches that are tints (shades) of other swatches. For example, if you use 20-percent cyan behind every sidebar in your publication, make this a swatch to apply it quickly. Later, if you decide you want 15-percent magenta instead, you can edit the swatch (by double-clicking on it) and all the tints will change throughout your document. To make a tint swatch, select a color in the palette and choose New Tint Swatch from the flyout menu.

Displaying Swatches

Unlike XPress, you can control how the Swatches palette displays its swatches. From the palette's flyout menu, you can choose to display just swatches by choosing Large Swatch, or you can display each swatch with its name by choosing Name. You can also display more swatches at a time by choosing either Small Swatches or Small Name from the palette menu. At the bottom of the palette, there are buttons to show all swatches, only color swatches, or only gradient swatches.

Default Colors

As with QuarkXPress, you can create colors that will be available for all future documents you create. Like the default preferences we discussed in Chapter 7, default colors are added to your swatches when you have no documents open.