Creative Suite Session 1: Illustrator

Illustrator
Colour;

• CMYK is the subtractive colour mode
• RGB is the additive colour mode.
• CMYK is process colour, they are the printing ink, the inks used during the printing process.
• Black is called the key colour as it reenforces the print, it brings it all together.

Illustrator is set up of the colour mode to print, therefore it is already set up as CMYK.

When applying colour to a shape or line you can double click on the colour boxes and it comes up with this box. This is just one of the many way to change colour. But with this option you can change the colour to something very particular, especially if you want to type in the percentages of each of CMYK, this will give you a more accurate colour.

Using the swatch palette is a good way to change colour as the colour is always consistent, you can also create your own swatch palette so you don't have to use the default swatches everytime.

After selecting a colour you can go to your colour guide and find the different shades and tints for that color.

These are the default colours that are left after you delete all the colours to create your own swatch.

When creating your own swatch this box comes up, and it is a good way to create new swatches as it can be very accurate with the percentage of each colour.

 To create a new swatch a different way, first go to colour and select a a colour anyway in this box.

Then you can go to settings and create new swatch.

To creeat multiple swatches at the same time, you can just make all of the shapes the colur you want them, then go to swatches and settings then add used colours.

Double clicking on a swatch which hasn't be done by mass and have a white triangle, can be changes and is also called a local swatch, where as if you double click on a white triangle swatch, it is known as global. Global means that, if the swatch is changed all of the objects in that colour will change too, where as the local swatch will only change the one object. You can also change the swatch to make it global or make it local.

After selecting one of my colours then creating new swatches of that colour but different tints, I then applied these colours to my shapes.

Then double clicking on the 100% colour means that I can change them all at the same time as this colour is global. This allows me to make them all a bit lighter and all a bit darker, as they are all the same colour, just different tints.

Spot colours;

• Spot colour is a colour that is a ready mixed ink, therefore CMYK doesn't have to mix it. This makes the process of printing cheaper. 
• A CMYK colour needs four colours to print it, where as a spot colour only needs one colour to print, therefore it is much cheaper to print than CMYK. 
• Although they can also add an additional expense, for example if you use lot of spot colours or CMYK and spot colours means that it will cost more. 
• Spot colour is also good for consistency, if you use a spot colour it will always stay the same, this is good when it comes to branding and identity.
• You can get more exciting colours out of the CMYK range, such as metallic inks, or florescent inks.

When we are working for commercial print we can find the swatches in a pantone book. Each has its own reference number, which is how it is printed, as the printer reads the unique reference number, this is how we reference the spot colour system. This process only works successfully in the commercial print world and printers.

This is how you find the pantone libraries.

If you are given a colour this is where you can find it, if you hover over the colours it will show you what its called, or the reference number.

When you have found the colour you like, you can just click on it once and it goes straight into you swatch library. In the library it shows the swatch with a cut corner, which means that it is a global colour, also it has a spot in the middle of it, therefore means that it is a spot colour.

You should never change the name of a spot colour, if you change the name the printer doesn't know which colour it is to match it successfully, as that was the reference number.

Even if the tint of a colour is different, you would only need to pay for one plate, when printing commercially.

When opening a new illustrator file, the swatches all go back to the default settings for the coloiurs, therefore if you want to save your swatches you can go to setting and save swatches to AI, this will save to your home drive. If you want to save the swatches so that you can use it on other programmes, you use the same method but save under ASE(Adobe Swatch Exchange), and save into a different folder. This will bring you your different colours onto another programme.

Then to open your swatch library you can go to the settings, open swatch library, user defined, then find the swatches that you saved, this is useful for consistency.