Tip of the Week: 5 Color Tricks

Mike Rankin

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Sure, there are probably folks who use InDesign and never need anything more than the Black swatch. But for vast majority of us, InDesign’s a much more colorful application. Here are 5 quick tips and tricks for working with colors:

1. Double-click the Fill or Stroke boxes in the Control panel or the Tools panel to open the Color Picker.

2. InDesign keeps track of the last used solid color and the last used gradient so you can use shortcuts to apply them to other objects. To apply the last used color to a selected object, press , (comma). To apply the last used gradient, press . (period). To apply [None], press / (forward slash). You can also use the controls at the bottom of the Tools panel to apply any of these.

3. To cycle through color modes (RGB, CMYK, and LAB) in the New Color Swatch or Swatch Options dialog box, Shift-click the color box.

4. To quickly define a spot color in the Swatches panel, make sure that no swatches are selected, then hold Command+Option/Ctrl+Alt while you click the New Swatch button.

5. To create swatches of all used colors in a document, choose Add Unnamed Colors from the Swatches panel.