The Swatches Panel is an area that stores recently used colors as well as has access to a range of predefined palettes. It is also good a good place to create custom color palettes that are either document or application based. Also just like the Color Panel; the Swatches Panel will have different options depending upon the Persona and the Tool selected.
You will also have the options for recent colors as well as a row of swatches for none (or no fill), black, mid-grey, white, and a teal blue (iPad only). There are also organized predefined palettes that are organized by category (like Pantone).
This Swatches Panel is geared towards working from predefined palettes, so whether it is one of the readymade palettes that are always in the Swatches Panel:
- Recent colors
- Application
- Greys
- Colors
- Gradients
- Pantone Ⓡ
- Pantone Ⓡ GoeBridge Coated
- Pantone+ Pastels and Neons Uncoated
- Pantone Ⓡ Goe Coated
- Pantone Ⓡ Color Bridge Coated V4
- Pantone+ CMYK Uncoated
- Pantone Ⓡ Formula Guide Solid Uncoated V4
- Pantone+ Metallics Coated
- Pantone+ CMYK Coated
- Pantone Ⓡ Color Bridge Uncoated V4
- Pantone Ⓡ Formula Guide Solid Coated V4
- Pantone Ⓡ Goe Uncoated
- Pantone+ Pastels and Neons Coated
So first and foremost when on an iPad you will be opening the Swatches Panel from the Color Panel.
Once you’ve opened the swatches panel this is what you’ll see. As you can see from this image if you tap where the arrow is pointing you can pull up all the default swatch palettes that are available. This will include Recent colors Application palettes and the Preloaded Pantone color books (listed above).
On the Desktop version there are some features like the ability to search, or making a color either overprint, global, a registration or spot color. However, on iPad these aren’t available at this time as far as I can tell.
The Stroke/Fill icon is located in the upper left corner of the swatches panel. You can always tell which color is active by looking at which color is in front.
As you can see here this is where you’ll find the color picker (eye dropper icon) and next to that is the picked color swatch. After you use the eye dropper to pick a color it fills the picked color swatch. You then tap on that picked color swatch and it will fill either stroke or fill depending on which is active.
Panel preferences lets you add application or document palettes and also will allow you add colors, rename or remove palettes.
Opacity controls which are available on the desktop version of the swatches panel are not on the swatches panel for the iPad version. If you want to adjust the opacity you have to go back to the color panel.
Lastly the quick and recent colors panel will be available when you open the swatches panel as well as in the color panel. Also if need be you can open the recent colors and see more than 5 recent colors.
Lastly just because I have no idea what this is. I reached out to someone I know about it and their idea was that it keeps the panel open but if anyone knows and wants to reach out I will update this accordingly when I know for sure what it is for.
As always thank you wonderful designers, and artists for reading my Self Teachings all the way to the end 😊. I appreciate you all!
Till next time, Happy Designing 💚
