Although it is very quick to create a color using the Color panel, you will find it more efficient to create color swatches. A swatch is a color that has been defined and is stored in the Swatches panel.
Unnamed colors are not available for all places where you use colors. For instance, only named color swatches can be used as part of text styles.
To work with the Swatches panel:
1. If the Swatches panel is not visible, choose Window > Swatches to open the panel or If the Swatches panel is behind other panels, click the Swatches panel tab.
2. To see the different types of swatches, click the icons at the bottom of the panel as follows:
- Show All Swatches displays both the color and the gradient swatches.
- Show Color Swatches displays only the color swatches.
- Show Gradient Swatches displays only the gradient swatches.
3. To change the display of the swatches in the panel, choose the following from the Swatches panel menu:
- Name displays a list of the swatch names in a large typeface.
- Small Name uses a more compact typeface to display the swatch names.
- Small Swatch displays only the square of the swatch color or gradient.
- Large Swatch displays a larger square of the swatch color or gradient.
The Color “Paper”
The swatch labeled[Paper] in the Swatches panel allows you to change the background color of the pages in your document. This can be helpful if your document will be printed on colored paper, specialty paper, or even newsprint that is not completely white. You can modify the paper color to help judge how your images will look when printed.
Although you can apply colors to objects and text directly from the Color panel, this is not considered a good production workflow. Instead, use the Swatches panel to add the color currently defined in the Color panel.