Importing Colors & Setting Default Colors In Adobe InDesign CC

Hey there, in this video we're going to do a couple of things. We are going to import existing colors from other documents. We're also going to bring in brand colors from other brand companies and put them all together in our Swatches panel as groups. We'll also change the default colors forever so that whenever you make a new document, you'll have colors ready to go. Also, show you how to clean them up at the end as well. All right, let's get started with that.

So next color trick is going to be, let's say that we got a document, this document here. We need to bring in the Maynooth Furniture brand colors. We don't have them in here. We can start creating them by having this little new color swatch here. Double clicking this, and typing it in if we know the CMYK colors. That's fine but let's say we already have done that work in another document, you just want to pull it in. It's easy to do. So in your Swatches panel, it's under 'Window', 'Color', you'll find 'Swatches'. Go to the little hamburger menu here, click on that, and go to 'Load Swatches'.

Now there is a fancy way of exporting, specifically just swatches. It's called an ASE file. It's an Adobe Swatch Exchange file, but nobody does that. There's an easier way to do it at least. You can actually point it in InDesign file, that has them. So this is just an old article that we've made. I know it already has the brand colors I need in there. I just need to steal them from it. So all you do is click on the 'indd' file, click 'Open'. You'll see there, it looked in it, and it found all of these colors. You have purple, pink, green, and yellow. So that is an easy way to just steal colors and pull them through.

Now the only trouble with this, is if I open up a new document and go to 'Document, I click 'OK', 'Create'. You can see, it's gone back to my defaults. So there isn't the Maynooth Furniture colors in there anymore. So the way to get that in there for good, let's say that you're working for Maynooth Furniture and you just want them in there permanently. So what you can do is, like lots of things in InDesign, change the default, just have nothing open. Back to the screen, go from 'Start' to 'Essentials' to kind of open it back to life. And in my Swatches panel here, do the exact same thing, just go 'Load Swatches'. Pick the InDesign file, click 'OK', you can see, there they are. What happens now is, if I go to 'File', 'New', and open up any old document you'll notice that there they all are, ready to be used. Quick, simple, easy, awesome.

Another little thing we can do is, I'm going to change the defaults. Let's say that-- I'm going to close this all down. Let's say that I am a freelancer, which I am, I do lots of work with different clients. Maynooth Furniture's maybe just one of my clients, I've got lots of them. So what I'd like to do, is I'd actually like to put them in a bit of group, and bring in lots of other ones. So, you can put them in color groups. So I'm going to click all of these, click the first one, hold 'Shift', grab the last one. And you see down the bottom here, this little folder, they call them Color Groups. Look like a folder, act like a folder. Now I can double click this, and say you are 'Maynooth Furniture'. Twirl it up, and I've got those colors ready to go whenever I start a new document.

Let's bring in some other clients. So let's go to the Flyout menu, let's 'Load Swatches', and let's have a look at brand colors for FedX. Here they all are, I'll grab you guys. Put them in a color group, and we've got FedX as well. I want you to do the last one by yourself, there's another one there for Google. So go through and put them into a group, and I'll see you here in a second. And we're back, and there's Google loaded. There's one condition to kind of consider when you're working with this is that if I-- you see, I've got Maynooth, FedX, and Google in there. If I go to my old document I was just working on, this one here, because this was created before I was working through all of those projects, you can see in here, they don't have the default. So it doesn't update them through every document, it's every new document you work on.

So there are some drawbacks. It's not going to kind of throw it into every existing document. Just on every single new document. So handy, know it's as handy as it could be. A way to get around this is just to make a document. So if I make a document here, so this document, untitled, it's got all of these in here. And I can just save this on to my server somewhere, for sharing it, or I'm just going to put mine on my 'Desktop' in 'InDesign Advanced Coursework'. I'm going to call this one 'Dan's Brand Colors'. Close it down, and he doesn't do anything other than, he has those guys, we can do this exact same thing. Back in my flyer here, I can say, actually, go to here, 'Load Swatches' and let's find 'Desktop', you, 'Dan's Brand Colors'. I'm just using him just to bring through all my colors. That's his only job page in the world, blank page, but he has these swatches.

So you're sick of swatches? Not finished yet, I got a little bit more to go. I want to show you some other cool stuff. So I'm going to close this down, and save it. With nothing else open, there's a couple of things we can do. Is that, these guys are the ugliest color mixes ever. They're just like-- the green, you'll never use, the red, that's not quite nice. 100% yellow. These colors here, you don't like them, and you never use them. I'm going to use the Magenta. It's kind of the color that I use for warning, and for stuff. But let's say I'm never going to use them, if I delete them from here, this little thrash can, that's deleting them forever. Every time I make a new document, I'll just have these brand colors. I'm not going to now, because as a trainer I need to have these colors in here whenever I start a class.

So you can delete them, and they're gone forever. Can you delete registration? Registration is one of those weird ones, you should never use it. If you're not sure what Registration Black is, it's all the colors. It's 100% black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. If you're not too sure what that is either, just don't use them, use black. Registration should be in there, but you can't delete these guys in brackets.

One last thing I'd like you to do, it's not the last thing but it's just another thing, let's have a look at that file we're working on. Is that, sometimes you get to the end of the job, and you're like "Man, it's just tough in here." There might be lots of different unnamed colors and it's just really hard to work on. What you can do is, there's a nice option in here, so have nothing selected, Black Arrow, just click in the background, nothing selected. Go into here, and there's an option here saying 'Select All Unused'. This is really nice, so 'Select All Unused'. It goes through everything in the document that hasn't been used and you can just bin it, and you're like, "Ugh." Then you realize what the hang is Cyan. That got selected. Actually I'm not sure, I can go to Separations panel, which we'll look at in a little bit. It's gone through and ripped out everything we don't need. And I have no idea where that Cyan swatch is.