adding colour swatches to your designer files

Adding colour swatches to Affinity and Adobe programs

There is so much out there to learn and so little time to learn it. I remember well the lessons on what colours work with which, and although not in tablets of stone the colour wheels and guides are so useful in making a design that is pleasing to the eye.

In both Affinity design/photo and Adobe Photoshop/in-design/illustrator suites there is provision for using colour schemes and swatches for keeping that corporate/club or just pleasant colour palette to draw from.

I was therefore surprised to see that Adobe have an app and web app to pick and choose colour schemes. It has probably been around for years but hey!

Go to  https://color.adobe.com to find the online or app version of the software ( you will need an Adobe ID - but it is free to set up if you don't have one)

From the front page you open in the create page. There are many options to make up your own complementary colour schemes. Choose from the drop down menu to the left and/or drag around the sliders on the colour wheel to adjust the palette displayed below. When you are happy save the palette as a theme (see below).

Alternatively select the explore option to see popular colour schemes put together and shared by others.

Hover over the swatch to get options to modify, add to your library or download the scheme to your device

For me adobe color has an amazing tool to extract colour palettes from photographed or scanned images. This is particularly good if you are combining colours from photos to desktop publishing or working with corporate/society colours on a design. You can import an existing photo from your device (on your tablet or phone you can take a photo) and let the app determine an optimum colour set from the picture.

Now you can choose different colour combinations from the image

When you are happy with your selection find the save button to save your palette as a theme to the adobe cloud (you may need to sign in if you haven't already.

Once saved you get the chance to review your theme. Select Download ASE for the palette to be downloaded to your device

Import to Affinity Photo

Open Affinity Photo

Find the swatches panel ( if needed turn it on in the View>Studio options)

Pick the options menu by finding the small icon to the right of the swatches title bar

Select Import Palette

You can choose here application or document palette ( guess the difference)

A file browser appears to choose the downloaded ASE  file

Select your colour scheme, I chose Flowery duvet here and click Open

The palette appears in your swatches menu.