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How do I get colors from a library theme into swatches?

Community Beginner ,
Aug 17, 2015 Aug 17, 2015

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I am learning to use color.adobe.com. I know the 'download' button is gone, so I can't download an ASE file.

I can get a color theme from Kuler into my library, that is not the issue.

What I don't understand is how to get those colors into the swatch panel. I could use a 3rd-party color picker app, but then, why even bother with Kuler and Libraries if I have to pick out colors one by one and name them in the swatches panel one by one? It seems like should be an easy way to transfer Library theme colors straight into the swatches panel, but it is not obvious to me.

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Deleted User
Aug 19, 2015 Aug 19, 2015

When you are in your desktop Adobe software - as long as you've sync'd with the Creative Cloud - your color swatches should be in the Libraries menu option under the subcategory of "Color Themes"

Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 8.54.19 AM.png

Once you're viewing those, you can select the individual color just by clicking on each one. And if you want to add it to your swatches, you simply select each color you want to add from your Color Themes, and then click the "New" button in the Swatches menu to add it.

Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 8.54.41 AM.png

Hope that helps!

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Guest
Aug 19, 2015 Aug 19, 2015

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When you are in your desktop Adobe software - as long as you've sync'd with the Creative Cloud - your color swatches should be in the Libraries menu option under the subcategory of "Color Themes"

Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 8.54.19 AM.png

Once you're viewing those, you can select the individual color just by clicking on each one. And if you want to add it to your swatches, you simply select each color you want to add from your Color Themes, and then click the "New" button in the Swatches menu to add it.

Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 8.54.41 AM.png

Hope that helps!

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Explorer ,
Sep 27, 2015 Sep 27, 2015

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This does not work for me. I can see the rgb values and hex value, but can't select, eyedropper tool or drag to swatches. Library are there and visible, but I can't seem to use them at all.

Lion, latest Adobe CC.

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Adobe Employee ,
Sep 27, 2015 Sep 27, 2015

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Hi Jeb,

Sorry you're having trouble. I have a feeling it may be your Mac OS. Are you using Color CC 2.2.3 and Creative Cloud 2015? (I only ask because the latest version of Creative Cloud requires Mac OS X 10.9 or higher.)

Sue.

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Explorer ,
Sep 27, 2015 Sep 27, 2015

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Yes, OS 10.10.5 and whatever the latest Color happens to be. It seems ridiculous you can no longer save these as .ase or .ai files at the very least, but I should be able to somehow use them within Illustrator (and everything else). Right now, I just see them.

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Adobe Employee ,
Sep 27, 2015 Sep 27, 2015

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Hi Jeb,


A few questions:

So, you're trying to use them as usual (i.e., fill doesn't work by just tapping on the Library color you want to fill with) and it's just not working? But you're not having any problem with your system colors?

How long has this been going on? Have you never been able to use Color CC swatches in Illustrator CC, or is a recent problem?

Have you tried closing Illustrator CC, signing out of Creative Cloud, restarting your computer, and signing back in?


Let me know what you've tried so we can go from there.


Sue.

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Explorer ,
Sep 27, 2015 Sep 27, 2015

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I've restarted the applications and restarted the machine. If I double-click a color at the top that will open a color picker window, but as far as the Libraries go all I can do is rename them no color change. Will restart everything and log out of CC (which I haven't yet tried) and see if that fixes it. Thanks again Sue!

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Explorer ,
Sep 28, 2015 Sep 28, 2015

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So, I restarted machine,  logged out of CC, logged back in, turned sync off and back on, started Illustrator and then Libraries started to work albeit slowly initially. By that I mean when I clicked on a color to color a shape it seemed to lag a bit initially, but eventually became instantaneous. So if anyone else suffers from this, restarting everything logging out/in and resyncing can be the solution to wonky libraries. Thanks!

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Adobe Employee ,
Sep 28, 2015 Sep 28, 2015

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Jeb,

Happy to hear it worked.

Thanks for reporting back about it.

Sue.

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Contributor ,
Jan 21, 2022 Jan 21, 2022

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Ideally, this would be a Right-Click > Add to Swatches.

Individual swatches are more flexible when working throughout the different applications.

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Explorer ,
Jan 21, 2022 Jan 21, 2022

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Yes that’s no problem, but in Kuler as it was, you could just export the entire palette into the swatch panel.

Sent from Kathryn's iPhone

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Community Expert ,
Jan 22, 2022 Jan 22, 2022

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Hi @KateTheGreat ,  you should be able to do it in Illustrator and InDesign by right-clicking the theme—with Illustrator there has to be an open document—but it’s not available in Photoshop. In PS you can sample directly from the theme in the Library to set the foreground color.

 

Screen Shot 3.png

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Explorer ,
Jan 22, 2022 Jan 22, 2022

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Thank you,

I don’t use InDesign, my work is all images no text or text layout, and I have not tried this as yet with Illustrator which is also a programme that I use not as frequently as Photoshop. Hopefully, the ability to just save the entire palette to PS will be reinstated at some point.

Cheers,

Kathryn Mattison-Gómez
Kathmat Art

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New Here ,
Nov 29, 2015 Nov 29, 2015

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I'm experiencing the exact same problem. Everything is up to date and I restarted the program already!

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Adobe Employee ,
Nov 30, 2015 Nov 30, 2015

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Hi PSWayf,

I'm not sure I understand... Can you give me a bit more detail about what's going on?

Sue.

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Explorer ,
Nov 30, 2015 Nov 30, 2015

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I had to logout and in, open and close Illustrator and other Adobe products and restart the machien a few times before it worked. Not sure which step actually got it to do work correctly. I also logged in to Adobe CC via a browser fwiw. And for me once it was started and the Libraries were loaded I needed to wait a minute for the colors to actually be available to add to swatches even though I could see them.

And to the OP's point / Note to Adobe developers if you ever see these messages: one should be able to import any or all of one's Libraries into the Swatches panels without having to individually select each color again (presumably one selected these colors judiciously enough the first time around).

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Adobe Employee ,
Nov 30, 2015 Nov 30, 2015

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Thanks XOJeb,

I'll pass this along to the product team.

Sue.

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Contributor ,
Aug 31, 2016 Aug 31, 2016

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Hi Sue


Yes – the intuitive way I expected Photoshop to behave in this instance is that I would be able to select all the colors in a library and have a button or menu choice to "Add to Swatches" and have them all copied into the document swatches, complete with their names (especially the names, since we need to know we're referring to the same colours as our colleagues and typing them is a pain).

Or simply drag and drop. Any of these would work.

(Another reason that we copy library colors to swatches is that the mechanism for applying library colors to elements in the image is inconsistent and still a bit kludgy. For example, you can't select a few words in a text block and simply click on the library color to apply that color. Might seem like a small thing, but we do it hundreds of times a day.)

Anyway - thanks for chipping in and helping out.

Tom

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Adobe Employee ,
Sep 01, 2016 Sep 01, 2016

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Hi Thomas,

Thanks for posting; I'll share all your comments with the Capture team. I completely agree; anything anyone does hundreds of times a day should be as easy as possible.

Thanks again.

Sue.

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New Here ,
Jan 07, 2016 Jan 07, 2016

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AWESOME! I knew the answer was somewhere! This way better then downloading.

Loving it

Scott

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Explorer ,
Feb 06, 2016 Feb 06, 2016

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Libraries suck anyway. I mean, recreate colors one by one? Really? I could copy palettes from Kuler/Color Themes in one click! Why can't I drag, copy, import, whatever A WHOLE color theme from Libraries to Swatches? It is Color Theme or Palette, not a bunch of random colors - it must be together!

Very annoying. Adobe could leave Color Themes import working, while Libraries not fully ready.

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Explorer ,
Feb 07, 2016 Feb 07, 2016

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‌Yes, it is absurd how primitive these are now.

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 27, 2016 Feb 27, 2016

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I'm trying to use the color libraries in Muse but I've had the same problem as the OP; I can see the library 'color theme', and can see the hex details if I hover over individual colours, but I can't select these colours in muse as  suggested by kplover.

I found a workaround; if I open up photoshop, the options for working with colour are exact as for kplover's post.

Selecting each colour from the color theme opens it as an individual colour, these can then be easily added to the swatch.

Its not ideal, but it does the job.


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Adobe Employee ,
Mar 02, 2016 Mar 02, 2016

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Hi Henkarus,

My apologies for taking so long to respond. I dropped a note about this to the product manager of Adobe Muse and she said that CC Libraries color swatch integration is not fully implemented in the current version of Muse... but the team is working on it and it should be a more fully-formed feature in a future update of the desktop app.

She has the link to your post and will hopefully come on and give you a better explanation than I could/can but in the meantime, I hope that helps a bit.

Sorry again for being so slow with this information.

Sue.

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Explorer ,
Jul 12, 2021 Jul 12, 2021

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This is an old post, but having the same problems and complaints as the others. Yes I can create a theme, sure it goes into libraries, but the first swatch worked fine, however when I went to add the next colour in the row it just kept showing me the first swatch colour? Kuler was definately "cooler". I could use my phone to just aim at something, maybe a bit of fabric in a shop and the theme was created as I chose, and to include just moving my phone a bit to find a different group of colours. I can't seem to find that feature now. Until Adobe comes up with a way to save the contents of the history panel on your images when you close Photoshop, it's not faesible to just reboot all the time. Right now though, I just want to be able to get those themes into swatches without having to go through so many steps or write down values. Change is not always a good thing apparently. 

 

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