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re: blocking swatches

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    • October 26, 2024 at 8:49 am #14407819
      David
      Member

      So … I’ll copy/paste some kind of colorful vector artwork into an InDesign layout, and suddenly all the colors associated with the art — dozens of them — are automatically added to the Swatches panel and Select Unused doesn’t work. To my way of looking at it, the Add Unnamed Colors seems to be on by default. Is there a way to disable this action? Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see an option to do that in Preferences.

    • October 26, 2024 at 8:54 am #14407820
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      My initial guess is that those colors were defined as spot colors, rather than RGB or CMYK. Spot colors always get added (whether you copy/paste or Place).

    • October 26, 2024 at 9:01 am #14407821
      David
      Member

      Ah, interesting. Thanks.

    • October 26, 2024 at 10:01 am #14407823
      Steve
      Member

      if you really don’t want this behaviour then rasterise your graphic and save it as tiff and important to Indesgn

    • October 26, 2024 at 10:05 am #14407824
      David
      Member

      @ Steve: True, but I’m too lazy to do that!

    • January 8, 2025 at 10:23 am #14410357
      Keith Cross
      Member

      Is there a reason why CMYK values aren’t added when I chose “Add Unnamed Colors” in my swatch palette? I’ve placed a PDF exported from Illustrator, and I’m not able to select any paths in the artwork, rather, I select the whole file, choose “Add Unnamed Colors” and nothing happens. The swatch does not already exist…so I’m not clear why the CMYK values aren’t added. Any advice would be much appreciated. I’m on Ventura, using 2025 versions of both Illustrator and Indesign, btw.

      • January 8, 2025 at 10:58 am #14410361
        Steve
        Member

        use the “Colour Theme Tool” to sample and create

      • January 8, 2025 at 11:42 am #14410363
        David Blatner
        Keymaster

        Keith: Add Unnamed Colors does not add colors from inside placed graphics. It only collect unnamed colors created in InDesign (for example, with the Colors panel)

      • January 8, 2025 at 12:00 pm #14410366
        Keith Cross
        Member

        Okay. Seems like it should be able to do that. But clearly, it can’t. Per your comment early in this thread…

        “…spot colors always get added”…which I’ve tested and confirmed…

        Doesn’t it seem odd that the CMYK values aren’t recognized in an accuarate way? What am I missing?

        I tried using a process color book designation (e.g. Pantone Process Coated), exported that file from Illustrator, placed in InDesign, but it doesn’t recognize the color…interestingly, a CMYK color from a “book” shows up as CMYK, whereas a Pantone spot color comes up as a “book” color (meaning in the swatches palette, the icons are different and if you double click on the swatch, the book color explictly says it’s a book color)…there being, I presume, no color profile setting in Illustrator beyond CMYK or RGB.

        Sure is strange…

    • January 8, 2025 at 11:42 am #14410364
      Keith Cross
      Member

      I’m not sure that is correct tool for the job in this case. I’m working on a logo in Illustrator that has a specific set of CMYK values. When I place the logo in InDesign, I want to see the relevant colors in my Swatch palette. Spot colors are added automatically, but not CMYK values. Add unused colors is the most direct tool (and part of swatch palette) and really should be the way this is done. When I use the color theme, it only shows me hex values and I don’t see a gear or options menu to change the color space of that tool window.. I need a precise CMYK value. My files color settings are set to North American Prepress 2 through Bridge. I hope this additional info makes this more clear. Not sure why the Adobe team would move such a fundamental function out of the swatch palette out to some other tool.

      I can use the “eyedropper” tool, but that only gives me RGB values, and when I try to convert that new swatch to CMYK, the values don’t match the original values set in Illustrator (a warning pops up that says it’s based on RGB, so I expected this to be wrong). But why? Why can’t InDesign just read the values from the Illustrator file?

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