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- [Instructor] In this movie
I'll show you how to save

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a color as a swatch inside Illustrator.

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And swatches are essentially
squares of saved colors

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that you can access anytime you like

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from the Swatches panel.

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And the Swatches panel is found in

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many locations in
Illustrator as we'll see.

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Now the great thing about swatches

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is they help you establish a
color theme inside a document.

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They also help you to
stick with that color theme

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as we'll see while building this calendar,

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and finally they automate
the application of colors

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to both strokes and fills.

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And so the practical
upshot is that if you think

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you're going to use a color more
than once inside a document,

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then go ahead and save it as a swatch.

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Now the first step is do define a color

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here inside the color panel.

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And so you can adjust the HSB values

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to anything you like, for example,

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or you can just go ahead
and select an object

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that's already colored
inside of your illustration.

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For example, I'm going to click on

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this hexagon for the month of March,

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and we'll see it's HSB values,

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once again inside the color panel.

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The thing is, this is a CMYK document,

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as you can see up here in the title tab.

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And so the primary
values are going to make

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a lot more sense if I
click on this fly-out menu

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in the top right corner of the color panel

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and choose CMYK.

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And then you can see we've
got a cyan value of 30%,

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a yellow value of 30, and
the other two values are 0.

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All right,

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now let's go ahead and save
this color as a swatch.

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By going up to the Window menu,

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dropping down to more or less the bottom

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and choosing the Swatches command,

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which will bring up the Swatches panel.

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Now by default, the swatches
are pretty darn dinky,

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which is why I like to go ahead

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and click on this fly-out menu,

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and choose Medium Thumbnail View

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in order to make the swatches
a little larger, like so.

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And then, I'll just go ahead

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and drag the bottom edge of this panel

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to expose all of the swatches

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associated with this particular document.

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All right, now all you have to do

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is click on this little page icon,

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which just as it makes a
new layer or a new artboard,

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creates a new swatches
inside the Swatches panel.

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And it'll be automatically
named after its CMYK values

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as you're seeing here.

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But you can override that name

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if you just enter a name of your own.

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And so I'm going to call this guy

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something moderately more creative

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such as Seafoam, let's say,

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now notice these two check boxes,

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global and add to my library.

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This first check box is awesome

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as I'll explain in the next movie.

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The second item is, in my
opinion, flat out annoying,

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because it means you can
end up with libraries

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that are cluttered with random colors

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that you just have to
tediously remove later.

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So for now,

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let's just go ahead and turn
both of these check boxes off,

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and then click OK.

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And sure enough, I have
a new swatches here

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inside my Swatches panel.

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And now I can use that swatch
to fill a different shape.

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So for example, I'm going to zoom
in on the month of September,

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and I want you to notice that
it's actually two hexagons.

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We've got one in front and then
we have another one in back.

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And that's true for all
the hexagons, by the way.

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Just a design decision I came up with.

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So go ahead and click on the outline

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for the outermost hexagon for September.

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And then make sure the fill is active

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in the top left corner
of the Swatches panel.

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If it isn't, if the
stroke is active instead,

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then you can just click on the fill.

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And notice that shortcut
that's popping up there,

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which is the x key.

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So you can press the x key all by itself

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to switch back and forth
between the stroke and the fill,

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either inside the Swatches panel

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or it works inside the
Color panel as well.

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All right, so I'll go back
to the Swatches panel here,

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and with the fill active you can just

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go ahead and click on Seafoam,

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and you will adjust that rear shape's fill

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as we're seeing here
inside the document window.

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Another way to work,

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I'll just go ahead and undo that

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by pressing control z
or command z on a Mac,

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is to go over here to the first swatch

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in the horizontal control panel,

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and click on it to bring
up a miniature version

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of the Swatches panel.

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And if you'd like to see these
thumbnails be bigger as well,

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then click on this fly-out menu icon

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and once again choose
Medium Thumbnail View.

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And I'll go ahead and make
my panel a little bit bigger,

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so that I can see all of the
swatches at the same time

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and then I'll click on Seafoam.

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And so the idea here is it doesn't matter

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whether the fill or stroke is active.

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And so if I undo that change
and click on the stroke

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here inside the Swatches panel,

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I can still go ahead and
click on that first swatch,

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which represents the fill no matter what,

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and select Seafoam, and
that will affect the fill

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and not the stroke associated
with that rear hexagon.

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All right, so another way
to work is to drag and drop.

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So let's say this time
I go ahead and click on

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a hexagon for April right here.

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Well then i can save
that color as a swatch

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by switching to my two column toolbox

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so that I can see my
fill and stroke icons,

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and then I'll go ahead and drag that fill

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and drop it into the
Swatches panel like so.

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At which point I have
yet another new swatch.

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Or I'll undo that change, by the way,

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again by pressing control or command z,

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so anything you do in the Swatches panel

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is entirely undoable,

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and then I can drag that first
swatch in the Control panel

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and drop it into the Swatches panel.

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Or here's another way to work.

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You can actually drag and
drop from the color panel.

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Now of course, I can't see
my Color and Swatches panel

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at the same time because
they're both grouped together.

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But watch this,

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you can go ahead and
click on that fill swatch

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and then drag it over to the Swatches tab,

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wait for the Swatches
panel to come up in front,

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and then drop your swatch into place.

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Now you may wonder after all this,

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well gosh,

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it seems so much easier to
click on that little page icon

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as opposed to dragging and dropping.

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The advantage of dragging
and dropping, however,

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is that you can drop your
swatch into a specific location.

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So for example, I want
all these colors to be

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in the same order as they
appear in the calendar.

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So I want to drop that color
right here at this location

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as opposed to Seafoam
which appears at the end.

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Now you can drag your swatches around

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inside the Swatches panel,

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but that is of course a second step.

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Now I'm going to have to rename
that swatch I just created

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by double clicking on it,

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which is also a separate step of course,

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and so you just have to
decide how you prefer to work.

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And I'll go ahead and call
this guy Harlequin, let's say.

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And notice those check
boxes are remaining off,

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at which point I'll click OK

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in order to accept that new swatch name.

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Now notice that I've messed things up.

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The stroke was active,

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and so now if I zoom in you can see

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that I've changed the
stroke around that hexagon

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to that same shade of green.

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And that happened as soon

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as I double clicked on
the swatch, by the way.

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And the best remedy for that
is to just click on white,

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which is one of the default
swatches in Illustrator,

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and that will return that stroke to white,

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as we're seeing inside
the document window.

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After which point I'll go
ahead and zoom out once again

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and I'll click off that
shape to deselect it.

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And that's how you save
your colors and swatches

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as well as how you apply a
swatch to a fill or a stroke

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of a selected object
here inside Illustrator.