Quick Tip Tuesday – Easy Peasy COLOR Squeezy!

I had a friend ask about swatches today, and I realized we don’t always remember to USE our swatch palettes!  So since she needed a little tutorial, I wrote one and thought I would share it with you too!  If you need all the details, you can CLICK HERE to read the whole shebang.  If you’re familiar with how the tool works, here’s a little reminder how you can make the swatch palette work for you!

1. You can sample colors from your layouts, and save them in the swatches palette, then sample them when you are adding text or strokes, or whatever to your layout.
2. You can save sets of colors in swatch files (file extension = .aco). This is great for sharing color sets with friends or between collaborating designers. No need to make jpeg graphics with colors and have to sample the image when you need to change colors.
3. Many color schemer sites will let you download .aco files! No need to copy down color numbers, or try to sample a screen shot of a set of colors you like. Look for a button that says download this swatch, and it will most likely be an .aco file. Put it where you decided to keep your swatch files, and when you want to use it just load it.

(For details on how to do these things, see the compete tutorial HERE)

So do you have a favorite green? Save it! Have an image that has great colors for a kit? Make a swatch file! Collaborating with friends? Share an .aco file, don’t waste time making swatch graphics. The Swatch Palette is your friend!

Happy Scrapping!