Adobe Illustrator CS3 Tip - Creating Cooler Color Groups!

 
 

Because of the overwhelming power of Live Color, sometimes the Color Guide panel gets overlooked. This is a shame, because the Color Guide is quite a powerful color manipulation tool in its own right. A quick example: Let's say you have a Color Group in the Swatches Panel, and you'd like to see variations of this Group with Swatches that are all a little cooler in color. Easy! Click on the Color Group folder in the Swatches panel (Window>Swatches). Take a look in the Color Guide panel (Window>Color Guide) and choose "Show Warm/Cool" from the panel's Options menu. Your original Group will be in the center column of the panel with warmer variations of the Group's colors in columns to the left and cooler versions of the Group's colors to the right. The further away from the center column, the more extreme the variations are. Command-click (Control-click on PC) on the cooler colors to the right of the center column to select one color in each row. Then press the "Save Color Group" button at the bottom of the Color Guide to add your Cooler Color Group to the Swatches panel.