- Way back in chapter six of the fundamentals course,
I introduced you to the swatches panel,
which allows you to collect colors
that you intend to use over and over again
inside your artwork.
In this chapter, I introduce you to the color guide panel,
which also collects swatches.
The difference is, instead of you having to define
each and every color by entering RGB, CMYK, or HSB values,
Illustrator does the work for you.
That's right.
The color guide panel generates colors automatically,
and it does so, not one at a time,
but dozens at a time, and without a seconds hesitation.
The only thing you have to do is select a base color
and define a harmony rule,
so Illustrator has some idea of
what sort of colors you want.
What is a harmony rule you ask?
It's a pattern that describes a physical relationship
between colors as measured on a circular graph
called a color wheel.
Here's the color wheel now.
You specify a base color on the wheel,
and then Illustrator looks for related colors,
according to a harmony rule,
which is a fixed pattern of lines
that go off at predefined angles.
That pattern may be relatively simple
or slightly more complex.
Your colors can even go off in all directions.
In the following movies, I'm not only going to show you
how each and every one of Illustrator's predefined,
23 harmony rules work,
I'm also going to show you how to define harmony rules
of your own.
If this sounds a bit elaborate,
remember that you are training the equivalent
of a color-generating robot,
one that's designed by you to give you
the exact colors you're looking for.