Working with Color
In This Chapter
ᮣ Creating and modifying colors
ᮣ Setting up tints
ᮣ Constructing gradients
ᮣ Managing swatches
ᮣ Applying colors, tints, and gradients
You see the world in glorious color. Yet not all publications take advantage of that fact, typically for budget reasons. But when you do have color available, take advantage of it: It brings a visual dimension that taps into brains, creating a level of raw visual interest unmatched by anything else. To take advantage of human beings’ color hot buttons, InDesign offers the ability to create and apply colors in many creative ways. But even if you can’t use color in every document, some of the techniques described here —
especially for tints and gradients — can help a staid black-and-white document get new panache through shades of gray.
Working with Colors
InDesign comes with only a few predefined colors: black, registration (black on each negative for the printing press), paper (white), none (transparent), cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, and blue. You’ll likely want to add a few of your own. Creating color swatches
Before you can apply any colors — whether to bitmap images or to layout elements, such as strokes, text, frames, and shapes — you must first define the colors in the Swatches panel (Window➪Swatches [F5]). You can also import colors from other Adobe programs and from some color images. 100 Part II: Document Essentials
No matter how you define colors, you have a couple of decisions to make first:
ߜ
Do you want to create your own color by mixing basic colors, such as red, green, and blue (called RGB and typically used for documents like Web pages and PDF files displayed on-screen); or cyan, yellow, magenta, and black (called CMYK, or process colors, and typically used for printing presses and by inkjet printers)?
ߜ
Do you want to use a color from an ink maker like Pantone or Toyo?
These colors — called spot colors — are typically used as an extra ink on your professionally printed document, but can also be converted to the standard four-process colors and so are handy when you know the color you want when you see it.
How do you tell what kind of color a specific swatch is? Look at the icons to the right of the swatch name. In Figure 6-1, you can see that Pantone 1675U
is a process color (the gray square) defined as CMYK (the square made up of four triangles). Nik Yellow is a spot color (the circle-in-a-square icon) defined from CMYK colors (that four-triangle square again). Hex:468966 is a process color (the gray square) defined as RGB (the square made up of three stripes). Finally, Muddy Yellow is a mixed-ink color (the multiple-drops icon), which is explained in the “Creating mixed colors” section, later in this chapter. All the color-creation tools in InDesign support both process and spot colors, and all have access to the predefined colors like Pantone and Toyo as well as to the free-form color pickers for mixing CMYK or RGB colors. If you plan to print the color on its own plate, you need to use a predefined color so that you know the printer can reproduce it. If you plan to color-separate a color into the four CMYK plates, it doesn’t matter whether you use a predefined color or make one of your own. One advantage to using a predefined color is that it’s easy to tell other designers what the color is; another is that you’ll get very close matches if you start with a predefined color and then end up having it color-separated in some documents and kept as a spot color in others. All colors in the Swatches panel receive a unique name and are tracked by InDesign. Each color is available to be used on any object in your document, with no risk of having slightly different variants. Plus, you can modify a swatch and ensure that all objects using that swatch are updated. You can also delete a swatch and tell InDesign which color to use in its place. Furthermore, when you print, you have control over how each color is handled (whether it’s printed to its own plate, whether it’s printed at all, and whether you need to make any adjustments to its ink density or screening angle). Figure 6-1 shows the Swatches panel.
If no document is open when you create, edit, or delete colors, the new color palette becomes the default for all future documents.
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Figure 6-1:
The
Swatches
panel and
its flyout
menu.
To create your own color, go to the Swatches panel and select New Color Swatch from the flyout menu. The New Color Swatch dialog box, shown in Figure 6-2, appears. Now follow these steps:
Figure 6-2:
The New
Color
Swatch
dialog box
lets you
define
colors.
1. In the Swatch Name field, give your color a name that describes it, such as Lemon Yellow or Blood Red.
To do so, uncheck the Name with Color Value option. (If left checked, InDesign names the color for you based on its color values; see an example at the top of Figure 6-2.) Note that this option is not available for swatch-based colors such as Pantone — you can’t change their names (that would confuse the printer as to what ink to use).
102 Part II: Document Essentials
2. In the Color Type pop-up menu, choose from Process or Spot.
3. In the Color Mode pop-up menu, choose the mixing system or swatch library (both are considered to be color models) you’ll use:
•
CMYK: Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black are the colors used in professional printing presses and many color laser printers.
•
RGB: Red, green, and blue are the colors used on a computer monitor, for CD-based or Web-based documents, and for some color printers.
•
Lab: Luminosity, A axis, B axis, is a way of defining colors created by the international standards group Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage (the CIE, which translates to International Commission on Illumination in English).
•
A swatch-based model: Sets of premixed colors from various vendors, including ANPA, DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo Ink, and Trumatch for print documents, as well as a Web-specific set and sets specific to Windows and the Mac OS for on-screen documents.
•
Other Library: InDesign also has the Other Library option from which you can select any color, tint, or gradient swatch library file in the old Adobe Illustrator 8 format. (You can’t use Illustrator’s patterned swatches, but don’t worry if the swatch file contains them: InDesign will simply ignore them.)
4. For the CMYK, RGB, and Lab models, use the sliders to create your new color; for the swatch-based models, scroll through the lists of colors and select one.
A preview appears in the box on the left.
5. If you want to create multiple colors, click Add after each color defi- nition and then click Done when you’re finished; to create just one color, click OK instead of Add.
You can also click Cancel to abort the current color definition. The most popular swatch libraries used by North American professional publishers are those from Pantone, whose Pantone Matching System (PMS) is the de facto standard for most publishers in specifying spot-color inks. The Pantone swatch libraries come in several variations, of which InDesign includes 13. Most of the time, you’ll use one of the following four: ߜ
Pantone Process Coated: Use this library when you color-separate Pantone colors and your printer uses the standard Pantone-brand process-color inks. (These colors reproduce reliably when color-separated, while the other Pantone swatch libraries’ colors often don’t.) ߜ
Pantone Solid Coated: Use this library when your printer will use actual Pantone inks (as spot colors) when printing to coated paper stock. Chapter 6: Working with Color
103
ߜ
Pantone Solid Matte: Use this library when your printer will use actual Pantone inks (as spot colors) when printing to matte-finished paper stock. ߜ
Pantone Solid Uncoated: Use this library when your printer will use actual Pantone inks (as spot colors) when printing to uncoated paper stock. Color swatches based on the CMYK colors — such as Focoltone, Pantone Process, and Trumatch — will accurately color-separate and thus print accurately on a printing press because a printing press uses the CMYK colors. Other swatches’ colors often don’t color-separate accurately because they’re supposed to represent special inks that may have added elements like metals and clays designed to give metallic or pastel appearances that simply can’t be replicated by combining cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Similarly, some colors (like several hues of orange and green) can’t be accurately created using the CMYK colors.
The bad way to create colors
Many people try to use the Color panel without thinking about it, choose Add Unnamed (Window➪Color [F6]) to define colors, which
Colors from the Swatches panel’s flyout menu
can be a mistake. At first, you may not realize
to add the modified color to the Swatches panel.
that you can create colors from the Color panel.
Of course, if you forget to do so, you have an
It shows a gradation of the last color used and
unnamed color, so it’s best to think Swatches
lets you change the tint for that color on the
panel when you think about adding or editing
current object. But if you go to its flyout menu
colors instead of the more obvious Color panel.
and choose a color model (RGB, CMYK, or Lab),
Even better, close the Color panel so that you’re
you get a set of mixing controls.
not tempted to use it in the first place.
So what’s the problem? Colors created through
Similarly, don’t use this InDesign feature: the
the Color panel won’t appear in your Swatches
ability to create colors by double-clicking the
panel, so they can’t be used for other objects.
Stroke and Fill buttons on the Tools panel, using
They’re called unnamed colors because they
a Photoshop-style color picker. As with colors
don’t appear in the Swatches panel, but may be
created in the Color panel, you can rectify this
used by objects in a document, which can cause
sin by adding any colors created this way to the
problems when you print. (Adobe added them to
Swatches panel by using the Swatches panel’s
InDesign to be consistent with how Illustrator
Add Unnamed Colors menu item. Otherwise, you
defines colors — a foolish consistency.)
run the same risk as creating colors through the
Color panel.
Fortunately, you can prevent unnamed colors:
If you go to the Color panel and modify a color
104 Part II: Document Essentials
Using Kuler colors
There’s a Web site out there that lets users share palettes of colors they’ve created. The idea is to give people with little fashion sense sets of colors that work well together. InDesign CS4 lets you tap into these colors and add them to your Swatches panel, using the Kuler panel (Window➪Extensions➪Kuler) You go to the Browse pane in the Kuler panel and choose from the color swatch palettes — called themes — already there. You can use the unlabeled pop-up menus at the top and the search field to narrow down your choices. Click one you want and then click the Add Selected Theme to Swatches iconic button at the bottom right of the panel. Repeat for each theme you want to copy.
You can create your own themes in the Create pane (as well as edit an existing theme; click the Create Theme in Create Pane iconic button in the Browse pane to do so). The options are mostly for expert users, but the principles aren’t too hard: For each of the five color swatches, use the color wheel to select new values or drag its current color (the circles) to a new location on the wheel. Click the Add Selected Theme to Swatches iconic button at the bottom right of the panel. You can also save the themes and upload them to the Kuler site for other users to enjoy.
Figure 6-3 shows both the Browse and Create panes of the Kuler panel. Figure 6-3:
The Kuler
panel lets
you copy
predefined
themes
(left) — sets
of colors —
as well as
create and
even share
your own
(right).
11_388488-ch06.indd 104
9/23/08 6:53:29 PM
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Creating mixed colors
InDesign offers another type of color: mixed-ink color. Essentially, a mixedink color combines a spot color with the default process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to create new color swatches. For example, you can combine 100 percent Pantone Yellow with 10 percent Deep Brown to get a darker version of yellow (called a duotone, though InDesign doesn’t limit you to mixing spot colors with just black, as traditional duotones do). To create a mixed-ink swatch, add a spot color swatch if none exists and then follow these steps:
1. Choose New Mixed Ink Swatch from the Swatches panel’s flyout menu.
The New Mixed Ink Swatch dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 6-4.
2. Select the percentages of the spot color and any or all of the default process colors you want to mix and give the new color a name.
3. Click Add to add another mixed-ink swatch based on the current spot color.
If you’re creating just one color, click OK instead of Add. You can click Cancel to abort the current mixed-ink color definition.
4. Click OK when you’re finished.
Figure 6-4:
The New
Mixed Ink
Swatch
dialog box
lets you mix
a selected
spot color
with any or
all of the
default
process
colors to
create new
shades and
variations.
106 Part II: Document Essentials
New Mixed Ink Group, a related option in the Swatches panel’s flyout menu, lets you create a set of colors from the same mix. You get to set the initial percentage of each color you want in the mix and the final value, as well as how many increments of each color you want. InDesign then takes all this information and creates a bunch of color swatches that combine each of the colors at each level so that you get a whole range of colors. The idea is to get a set of related colors created for you, such as a set of blue-green hues that range from light aqua to dark marine. Experiment with this expert feature to see what it can do for you.
Defining Tints
A tint is simply a shade of a color. InDesign lets you create such tints as separate color swatches — like any other color — so they’re easy to use for multiple items. The process is easy:
1. In the Swatches panel, select a color from which you want to create a tint.
2. Using the Swatches panel’s flyout menu, select New Tint Swatch.
The New Tint Swatch dialog box, shown in Figure 6-5, appears.
3. Click and drag the slider to adjust the tint or type a value in a field on the right.
4. Click Add to create another tint from the same base color and then click OK when you’re finished.
(If you’re adding a single tint, you don’t need to click Add; just click OK
when done.)
Figure 6-5:
The New
Tint Swatch
dialog box
lets you
define
colors; a
nearly
identical
dialog box
named
Swatch
Options lets
you edit
them.
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Click Cancel if you change your mind about the current tint. Any new tint will have the same name as the original color and the percentage of shading, such as Sky Blue 66%.
You can create a tint from a tint, which can be confusing. Fortunately, InDesign goes back to the original color when letting you create the new tint. Thus, if you select Sky Blue 66% and move the slider to 33%, you get a 33 percent tint of the original Sky Blue, not a 33 percent tint of the Sky Blue 66% (which would be equivalent to a 22 percent tint of the original Sky Blue).
You modify and delete tint swatches like any other color swatch, using the Swatches panel’s flyout menu.
You can also apply tints to objects without creating a separate swatch for each tint. After applying the color (described in the “Applying swatches” section, later in this chapter), select the object and change the value in the Tint field of the Swatches panel or use its pop-up menu’s predefined tint values. Easy as pie!
Working with Gradients
A long-popular design technique is the gradient (also called a blend or gradu- ated fill), which blends two or more colors in a sequence, going smoothly from, say, green to blue to yellow to orange. InDesign has a powerful gradientcreation feature that lets you define and apply gradients to pretty much any object in InDesign, including text, lines, frames, shapes, and their outlines (strokes).
Creating gradient swatches
In the Swatches panel, where you define colors and tints, you can also define gradients. Just select the New Gradient Swatch option in the flyout menu. You get the dialog box shown in Figure 6-6. The first two options are straightforward, but the rest of the controls are tricky, so pay close attention:
1. Type a name for the gradient in the Swatch Name field.
Picking a name is a bit more difficult than naming a color, but use something like “Blue to Red” or “Bright Multihue” or “Logo Gradient” that has a meaning specific to the colors used or to its role in your document.
2. In the Type pop-up menu, choose Linear or Radial.
A linear blend goes in one direction, while a radial blend radiates out in a circle from a central point.
108 Part II: Document Essentials
Location controls
Figure 6-6:
The New
Gradient
Swatch
dialog box.
Stop points
3. Select a stop point — one of the squares at the bottom of the dialog box on either end of the gradient ramp (the gradient ramp shows the gradient as you define it).
The stop points essentially define the start color (the stop point on the left) and the end color (the stop point on the right). With a stop point selected, you can now define its color.
4. In the Stop Color pop-up menu, choose what color model you want to use — select from CMYK, RGB, Lab, and Swatches — for the selected stop point.
The area directly beneath the pop-up menu changes accordingly, displaying sliders for CMYK, RGB, or Lab, or a list of all colors from the Swatches panel for Swatches, depending on which model you choose.
5. Create or select the color you want for that stop point.
If you selected Swatches in the Stop Color pop-up menu, you can select the [Paper] swatch — essentially, transparency or no color — as a stop point in a gradient. (Note that you may have to scroll through the list of swatches to find it; it’s near the top of the swatch list.) You can also click and drag swatches from the Swatches panel to the gradient ramp.
6. Repeat Steps 3 to 5 for the other stop points (you can have several).
Note that the color models for the two stop points don’t have to be the same — you can blend from a Pantone spot color to a CMYK color, for example. (If a gradient mixes spot colors and process colors, InDesign converts the spot colors to process colors.)
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You now have a simple gradient. But you don’t have to stop there. Here are your other options:
ߜ
You can change the rate at which the colors transition by sliding the location controls (the diamond icons) at the top of the gradient ramp. ߜ
You can create additional stop points by clicking right below the gradient ramp. By having several stop points, you can have multiple color transitions in a gradient. (Think of them like tab stops in text — you can define as many as you need.) You delete unwanted stop points by clicking and dragging them to the bottom of the dialog box.
Notice that a location control appears between each pair of stop points —
that means each pair can have its own transition rate.
When you create a new gradient, InDesign uses the settings from the last one you created. If you want to create a gradient similar to an existing one, click that existing gradient before selecting New Gradient Swatch from the flyout menu. InDesign copies the selected gradient’s settings to the new one, which you can then edit. For example, you would first click a linear gradient and then select New Gradient Swatch to create a radial version of that existing linear gradient.
The Swatches panel shows the actual gradient next to its name. The pattern also appears in the Fill button or Stroke button in the Tools panel if that gradient is currently selected as a fill or stroke, as well as in the Gradient button in that panel, whether or not it’s currently applied as a fill or stroke. Understanding the Gradient panel
Just as it does with unnamed colors, InDesign lets you create unnamed gradients — gradients that have no swatches. Unlike unnamed colors, you can use these to your heart’s content because all colors in a gradient are converted to process colors and/or use defined spot-color swatches — so no unnamed colors are in their output. The process is pretty much the same as creating a gradient swatch (covered in the previous section, “Creating gradient swatches”), except that you select an object and then open the Gradient panel (Window➪Gradient). In that panel, you select a stop point and then choose a color to apply to it by clicking a color in the Swatches panel or in the Color panel. You create and adjust stop points here just as you do when defining a gradient swatch.
The difference? You can reuse gradients in the Swatches panel, whereas you can’t reuse gradients applied through the Gradient panel. But you can add them to the Swatches panel by Control+clicking or right-clicking the gradient in the Tools panel’s Fill or Stroke iconic button and then choosing Add to Swatches in the contextual menu that appears.
110 Part II: Document Essentials
The Gradient panel can also manipulate gradient swatches: After you apply a linear gradient — whether via a gradient swatch or as an unnamed gradient — you can change the angle of the gradient, rotating the gradient within the object. Just type the desired degree of rotation in the Angle field to rotate the gradient’s direction by the value. Negative values rotate counterclockwise, whereas positive values rotate clockwise.
Note that you can’t rotate a radial gradient because it’s circular and, thus, any rotation has no effect. That’s why InDesign grays out the Angle field for radial gradients.
But you can still adjust the location of a radial gradient — as well as that of a linear gradient — by using the Gradient tool in the Tools panel. After applying a gradient to an object, select the Gradient tool and draw a line in the object, as shown in Figure 6-7:
ߜ
For a linear gradient, the start point of your line corresponds to where you want the first stop point of the gradient to be; the end point of the line corresponds to the last stop point. The length of the line determines how stretched or compressed the gradient is, while the starting point of the line determines how much the gradient is offset within the object. Also, the angle at which you draw the line becomes the angle for the gradient. Figure 6-7:
At left: The
Gradient
tool lets you
set the offset, adjust
the gradient
length, and
(for gradient blends)
adjust the
gradient
angle. At
right: The
Gradient
Feather tool
acts like the
Gradient
tool, but
starts with
transparent
as the color.
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ߜ
For a radial gradient, the line becomes the start and end point for the gradient, in effect offsetting it.
The Gradient Feather tool — accessed through the Gradient tool’s pop-out menu or via the shortcut Shift+G — acts just like the Gradient tool except that it starts with transparency as the initial “color,” as shown in Figure 6-7. See Chapter 8 for more on gradient feather and other lighting effects. Managing Swatches
When you create colors, tints, and gradients, don’t go overboard and make too many. You’ll also find that different documents have different colors, each created by different people, and you’ll likely want to move colors from one document to another. InDesign provides basic tools for managing colors in and across documents.
Editing swatches
Modifying a swatch to change its settings is simple: Just double-click it in the Swatches panel. (You can also choose Swatch options from the Swatches panel’s flyout menu.) The Swatch options dialog box appears, a clone of the New Color Swatch, New Tint Swatch, or New Gradient Swatch dialog box (based on what kind of swatch you double-clicked).
The New Swatch and the Swatch Option dialog boxes do have a slight difference: The Swatch Option dialog boxes include the Preview option, which lets you see your changes in a selected object (if it’s visible on-screen, of course) as you make changes in the Swatch Options dialog box.
Copying swatches
To duplicate a swatch so that you can create a new one based on it, use the Duplicate Swatch option in the Swatches panel. The word copy is added to the name of the new swatch. You edit it — including its name — as you would any swatch.
When selecting swatches for deletion or duplication, you can Ô+click or Ctrl+click multiple swatches to work on all of them at once. Note that Shift+clicking selects all swatches between the first swatch clicked and the swatch that you Shift+click, whereas Ô+click or Ctrl+click lets you select specific swatches in any order and in any location in the panel. 112 Part II: Document Essentials
Deleting swatches
InDesign makes deleting swatches simple: Just select the color, tint, or gradient in the Swatches panel. Then choose Delete Swatch from the flyout menu or click the trash can iconic button at the bottom of the Swatches panel. Well, that’s not quite it. You then get the Delete Swatch dialog box, which lets you either assign a new color to anything using the deleted swatch (the Defined Swatch option) or leave the color on any object that is using it but delete the swatch from the Swatches panel (the Unnamed Swatch option). (As explained in this chapter’s sidebar “The bad way to create colors,” you should avoid unnamed colors so don’t choose the Unnamed Swatch option.)
If you delete a tint and replace it with another color, any object using that tint will get the full-strength version of the new color, not a tint of it. Likewise, if you delete a color swatch that you’ve based one or more tints on, those tints will also be deleted if you replace the deleted swatch with an unnamed swatch. However, if you delete a color swatch and replace it with a defined swatch, any tints of that deleted swatch will retain their tint percentages of the replacement-defined swatch.
InDesign offers a nice option to quickly find all unused colors in the Swatches panel: the flyout menu’s Select All Unused option. With this option, you can delete all the unused colors in one fell swoop. Note that you don’t get the option to assign each deleted color separately to another color in the Delete Swatch dialog box — they all are replaced with the color you select or are made into unnamed colors. Because no object uses these colors, choosing Unnamed Swatch in essence is the same as replacing them with a color using the Defined Swatch option.
If you delete a swatch and replace it with an unnamed swatch, you can recapture that deleted swatch later by choosing the Add Unnamed Colors menu item in the Swatches panel’s flyout menu.
Importing swatches
A quick way to import specific colors from another InDesign document or template is to click and drag the colors from that other file’s Swatches panel into your current document or template.
You can import colors from other Creative Suite programs from which you have saved Adobe Swatch Exchange color library files, choosing Load Swatches from the Swatches panel’s flyout menu. You can also import swatches directly from other InDesign documents. From the resulting dialog box, navigate to the file that contains the colors you want to import, select that file, and click Open.
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When you import color swatches from other documents or Adobe Swatch Exchange files, InDesign brings in all the colors. You can’t choose specific colors to import.
Also, when you import a graphic file in PDF or EPS format, any named colors (swatches) in that file are automatically added to the Swatches panel. You can also use the new Kuler panel to import sets of color swatches. (For more on that topic, see the section “Using Kuler colors,” earlier in this chapter.) Sampling colors
You may wonder how you can use colors in your
3. The Eyedropper tool changes to the Marker
imported graphics for which InDesign can’t find
tool.
any swatch information, such as in TIFF files or
Any object you select with the Marker
photos embedded in a PDF file. As you may
tool will have the color applied to its fill or
expect, InDesign provides a way to capture
stroke, depending on whether the Fill or
these colors: the Eyedropper tool. Here’s how
Stroke iconic button is active. Note that you
it works:
can switch between the Eyedropper and
1. In the Tools panel or Swatches panel,
Marker tools to select different colors and
choose the Fill iconic button or Stroke
apply them by holding the Option or Alt key
iconic button.
to get the Eyedropper tool back and then
releasing it to switch to the Marker tool.
It doesn’t really matter which button you use
unless you’ll immediately create a shape or
4. To add the new, unnamed color to the
enter text after capturing the desired color;
Swatches panel, Control+click or right-
in that case, choose whichever aspect
click the Fill iconic button or Stroke iconic
you’ll want the new object or text to have
button (whichever has the captured color)
the color applied to.
and choose Add to Swatches from the con-
textual menu that appears.
2. Select the Eyedropper tool and then click
the graphic where the desired color is Now you can edit and apply the captured used.
color like any other color swatch.
The Fill or Stroke iconic button now has that
The following figure shows a composite image
color. (If the Eyedropper tool isn’t visible in
that highlights the Eyedropper tool at center left
the Tools panel, look for the Measure tool
(over the cat’s ID tag) and the Marker tool at
and then click and hold down its icon to get
right (over the rectangle at the bottom).
the pop-up menu that lets you select the
Eyedropper tool.)
(continued)
114 Part II: Document Essentials
(continued)
Exporting swatches
You can do more than import swatches. InDesign also lets you save swatches into color library files for use by other Creative Suite users. Just select the colors you want to save and then choose Save Swatches from the Swatches panel’s flyout menu. You are asked to give the color library file a name before you save it.
InDesign doesn’t include mixed-ink colors when you save swatches for use by other Creative Suite programs. Any selected such swatches are simply ignored.
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Applying Swatches
Applying colors, tints, and gradients to objects in InDesign is quick work. Select the object and then click the Formatting Affects Text button or Formatting Affects Container iconic button in the Swatches or Gradient panel as appropriate. If you’re using the Swatches panel, click the appropriate swatch; if you’re using the Gradient panel, adjust the gradient as desired.
When it comes to coloring graphics in InDesign, you can apply color and tints to grayscale and black-and-white bitmapped images, such as those in the TIFF
and Photoshop formats. But you can’t color vector-based graphics (such as those in the Illustrator and EPS formats) or color bitmapped images. Another way to apply colors, tints, and gradients is by selecting the object and using the Formatting Affects Text, Formatting Affects Content, Fill, or Stroke iconic buttons in the Tools panel to define what part of the object you want to color. You can use the Swatches or Gradients panels to select a swatch or pick the last-used color and gradient from the Apply Color and Apply Gradient iconic buttons near the bottom of the Tools panel. For tints, you can use a tint swatch, or you can simply apply a color from the Swatches panel and enter a tint value in the panel’s Tint field. When applying color to text, you can apply it to all the text in the frame by using the Formatting Affects Text iconic button (which is what the Formatting Affects Contents iconic button is renamed when you select text) or to specific text by highlighting that text with the Type tool.
You can also apply color as part of your character and paragraph styles in the Character Color pane when creating or editing styles. See Chapter 13 for more on styles, and Chapters 14 through 16 for more on text formatting. You can also apply colors and tints to gaps in strokes. Open the Stroke panel by choosing Window➪Stroke (Ô+F10 or Ctrl+F10), then select a color in the Gap Color menu (if you don’t see this option in the Stroke panel, select Show Options from the panel’s flyout menu).
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