Illustrator, the basics

Member lesson

Colour, swatches and global colours

Lesson 5 of 8 in Illustrator, the basics.

Checked against the makers' documentation on 9 October 2026.

Create Color Swatches and Tints Using Illustrator | Adobe Creative Cloud · Adobe Creative Cloud
Lesson

Window > Swatches opens the panel that holds a document's named colours, and the swatch applied to whatever you have selected is highlighted in it. Colours are mixed in the Color panel (Window > Color), which takes RGB, HSB, CMYK or greyscale values and has a field for a six-digit hex code such as 8f4f1c, or in the Color Picker, which opens when you double-click the fill or stroke box. That colour belongs to one object. Save it as a swatch and it gets a name and one value you can change later.

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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    In the Swatches panel, how do you recognise a global colour?

    • Its name is set in capitals
    • A small triangle in its lower corner
    • A dot in its centre
    • It always sits at the top of the panel
  2. Question 2, locked

    You edit a global colour that has three tints. What happens to the tints?

    • They change colour and keep their own percentages
    • They stay exactly as they were
    • They are deleted and have to be remade
    • They turn into spot colours
  3. Question 3, locked

    How many colours can you add to guide Generative Recolor?

    • One
    • Three
    • Ten
    • Up to five

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