Webby77 wrote in the forums:
Is there a way to display several different swatch sets. For example, if I have a publication that is published twelve times a year and each month’s a different set of colours, can I list these in the Swatches Panel as say January, February, March, etc.?
As Theun replied on the forum: There is no way to group color swatches into folders, like you can with styles (or — with a plug-in — with layers), though that has been suggested many times over the years. However, you can fake groups with a little artifice.
[[Editor’s update: InDesign CC now has a color folder/group feature.]]
Make all the swatches for one month, then select them all in the Swatches panel and choose Duplicate Swatches from the panel menu. You’ll now need to rename each swatch and perhaps (optionally) change its color definition. Then, to give yourself a visual clue as to where the break is, create a new color swatch (any color will do) and give it a name like 15 equal symbols or dashes or something visually distinctive:
Your new divider swatch shows up at the bottom of the Swatches panel. However, you can reorder swatches by dragging them up and down! The result is a Swatches panel with different “groups” laid out:
Of course, you may want to do all of this with no documents open, so that it becomes your default settings and applies to all future documents. Or, when you’re done, export the colors out of a document as an ASE file by choosing Save Swatches from the panel menu.
There’s one more way to achieve a similar goal: Just use one set of colors and a bunch of different ASE files, then swap them out. The trick to that is a script, which you can read about it this old post by Russell Viers.
This article was last modified on December 20, 2021
This article was first published on June 4, 2010
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David Blatner for President!
Thanks for the trick. It’s useful for me….. GBU
I cannot understand why there is no group swatches option in Indesign! Its 2012 people. This is useful but ridiculous to have to do that when in Illustrator I can just group them. Indesign needs colour handling like Illustrator as these things are really frustrating.
Not sure, but this seems to have worked for me by creating some simple square graphics as a container per se for the custom process swatches in Adobe Illustrator, imported the graphic and embedded the file into the master page off to the side of the pasteboard. the swatches come in with the graphic and seem to be locked down…
I’ve created several ASE files for clients which contain custom colors. My question is how do they get them to load in the same order as they’re in on my palette?
You could also begin each swatch name with a 2-digit number corresponding to the month: 01-Heading, 01-Sidebar; 02-Heading, 02-Sidebar; etc. Then you wouldn’t need to re-order the swatches when you’re done creating them. I like the idea of creating an “empty” swatch for a divider between groups.
What a good idea! Thanks!
Nice trick. I used it with layers (and back then with Styles) but i never thought using it with colours.