Sep. 23, 2008
Take your swatches back into InDesign
In the last post we looked at how to get your swatches from InDesign into Illustrator or Photoshop, now let’s look at importing swatches from Illustrator or Photoshop back into InDesign. As in the last post, the end result we are looking for is to exchange swatches throughout the creative suite as a .ASE file. If you haven’t yet looked at the last post, you might want to do so before reading on.
The first thing you need to do is export your swatches from either Illustrator or Photoshop. Let’s take a look at Illustrator first. In Illustrator go to your swatches panel and select the swatches you would like to export. To select all swatches in the list, select the first swatch hold “Shift” on the keyboard and then click on the last swatch in the list. To select swatches randomly hold “Command” (Mac) or “Control” (PC) and select each swatch separately. Once selected go to the swatches panel flyout menu, located at the top right hand side of the panel and choose “Save Swatch Library as ASE…”. A new dialogue will appear asking you where you want to save the .ASE, navigate to your preferred location, give the .ASE file an appropriate name and then choose “Save”. When you choose “Save” you will get a warning dialogue telling you that you can’t save Gradients, Patterns or Tints in your .ASE file as they are not exchangeable items, choose “OK” to finish.
Before we import these swatches in InDesign let’s go through the same process in Photoshop. From the swatches panel in Photoshop you can’t select the flyout menu and choose “Save Swatches for Exchange…”. A new dialogue will appear asking you where you want to save the .ASE file, navigate to your preferred location, give the .ASE file an appropriate name and then choose “Save”. When saved the .ASE thumbnails differ slightly between InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop however they are the same format (see image below).
Ok all the hard work is done - let’s load these swatches in InDesign. Because the swatches we exported from Illustrator and Photoshop are now in the .ASE format we can load them exactly the same way in InDesign. In InDesign go to your swatches panel flyout menu, located at the top right hand side of the panel. From the menu that appears choose “Load Swatches…”. Navigate to your .ASE file accordingly in the dialogue that appears and choose “Open”. Your swatches will now appear at the bottom of the swatches panel list.
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3 Responses to “Importing your PS & AI swatches into InDesign”
Neil,
Don’t forget you can get Grad swatches from Illustrator to InDesign (posted first by your fellow Countryman - Mike McHugh I think). Create a series of shapes in Illustrator and fill with the desired gradients (remove stroke). Copy those shapes over to InDesign and, voila, the grad swatches appear in the Swatches panel. (This also works to a limited extent with simpler pictures carried over to InDesign - the colors in the picture carry over to the swatches panel - If picture is too complex this will not work).
But how to save the Grad swatches in InDesign? Well you cannot directly (accept in any saved file you make). But you can drag those colored objects you pasted into InDesign off the InDesign artboard to the desktop and save as a Snippet. Drag that in to a new InD doc then hit delete (the imported shapes) and the swatches are still there in the Swatches panel!
Cool stuff.)
By Gary Spedding on Oct 3, 2008
Thx!!!it was great!it works! very good summary and on point!!!!
By Sahara on Oct 30, 2009
this was very helpful!!!!!!!!!!!!
By M Joan Breining on May 18, 2010