There’s a huge difference between the [Black] and Registration colors in the Swatches palette, and yet to many people they look the same and they’re next to each other in the palette, so they choose them interchangably. Don’t! Registration mean “all colors” (so 100% Registration shows up as 100% each of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).
If you don’t want to be tempted, move Registration someplace else in the list (preferably down to the bottom where you might not see it). That’s right: You can drag color swatches up and down to order them differently.
And if you drag a swatch while no documents are open (called the “no pub state”), it affects the order of the Swatches panel for all subsequent documents you create! Similarly, you can add swatches while no documents are open, and those swatches will appear in all new documents automatically.
Updated Jan. 5, 2023
This article was last modified on January 5, 2023
This article was first published on August 4, 2006
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