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• • April 21, 2025 at 11:40 am #14413974
    David

    Member

    I like to use the HSB color mode to create color swatches — it’s just my preference, in case anyone’s wondering — but I’ve learned the hard way that InDesign doesn’t save swatches in HSB, and so I’ve got this document with loads of HSB swatches (and a few Pantones as well) that I wish to save and load into another document. Is there a way to “batch” convert all swatches in the Swatches panel to CMYK? Or am I stuck with the “one potato, two potato” method of converting them all one at a time?

  • April 21, 2025 at 12:04 pm #14413975
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    HSB color swatches are literally the same as RGB swatches. Converting swatches to CMYK is prone to all kind of wonkiness because it’s not color managed… that is, you’re not specifying “which RGB” and “which CMYK” (there are many many RGBs and CMYKs). I generally would not convert color swatches to CMYK.

    That said, if you want/need to, there’s a discussion and couple scripts here:

    Script to convert all colors to CMYK Process?

  • April 21, 2025 at 12:21 pm #14413976
    David

    Member

    Interesting! Thanks for the input!

  • April 21, 2025 at 1:04 pm #14413977
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    If the intent of your document is for print then use something which your printer will understand (usually CMYK +½ or spot). If you are designing for digital then by all means use HSB but as pointed out elsewhere, RGB will pretty much do the trick as well..

  • April 22, 2025 at 5:06 am #14413986
    Petar Petrenko

    Participant

    If you still want to convert the swatches, then:
    1. Select the swatches;
    2. Right click with mouse;
    3. Select “Swatch Options…”;
    4. Choose the model you like and
    5. Click “OK”.

  • April 22, 2025 at 5:14 am #14413987
    David

    Member

    @ Petar: Ohhhhhh! (duh!) Thank you.

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