Illustrator Workshop

Pantone 381C

Using the colour picker you can find the nearest equivalent of the spot colour and learn its CMYK and RGB colour values.

Spot Colour - A single, purpose mixed colour used instead of CMYK and it has its own printing plate. Using spot colours is cheaper through using one colour and saves time through using only one plate.

Pantone : Choosing which Pantone book to use is decided through negotiation with the printer after the stock has been selected. When using a colour book such as Pantone, you can search for a colour in the finder by typing in the unique reference code.

Focoltone and Trumatch are used in the USA.

Adding swatches to a library helps to maintain consistency, particularly if undertaking work for a repeat client. Add the colours that you have been using within the document to a personal library to produce swatches of whats been used.

A Global Swatch is where you apply the same colour to all objects within a single document at once. You can also change the opacity of a global swatch and save it as a tint within the library.

Save the personalised swatch library as an 'Ai' and name it if you want to use the swatches on other documents. You can then find the saved library under 'user defined'.