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sarahb78823801
Participant
December 17, 2024
Open for Voting

Accurate Creative Cloud Color Swatches

  • December 17, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 109 views

I wish there was a way to accurately and quickly use color swatches from my Creative Cloud color library in my After Effects projects.

 

I create digital assets for many different brands, so I have their respective RGB colors saved in my CC library. When I choose those swatches in Photoshop, the Hex codes are correct and the colors are accurate.

 

The only way I've found to choose a CC library color swatch in After Effects is by using the eyedropper tool. While this generally works okay, there are certain colors that are inaccurate and the Hex codes don't match. I don't understand why it works fine in Photoshop but not in After Effects. Both working spaces are sRGB IEC61966-2.1 and both use Adobe color management.

 

So the eyedropper function in After Effects needs to be accurate, or there could possibly be a swatches panel in After Effects...or something! Help me out Adobe, I can't be the only one struggling with this.

    2 replies

    S
    selfbuildtype
    Inspiring
    June 4, 2026

    Utterly ridiculous that in 2026 After Effects doesn’t have any way of doing this without linking using expressions or relying on a third party to fix this oversight. I mean everyone uses colour, right? probably in every project?

    I like that AE is adding better 3D support but I could live without some of the AI additions when there’s no colour swatches. Realistically this should have been built into the app 20+ years ago. Or since its inception?

      D
      danielt14227861
      Participant
      June 4, 2026

      Completely agree. It’s one of those bizarre gaps in AE that everyone just accepts because we’ve all built workarounds over the years.

      Illustrator has had proper swatches forever. Figma, Photoshop, even Premiere now handles colour management better in some areas. Yet in After Effects, if you want global brand colours you’re still:

      • linking expressions
      • building controller nulls
      • using pseudo effects
      • relying on scripts/plugins
      • or manually hunting hex values across comps

      On large corporate projects with dozens of deliverables, it becomes a genuine workflow issue rather than a “nice to have”.

      The irony is Adobe keeps pushing AI features while one of the most basic motion design fundamentals — centralised colour management — still feels bolted together. Especially when most AE work is branding, social, broadcast packages, explainers, lower thirds, UI animation… all heavily colour dependent.

      A proper native swatch/style system with:

      • global updates
      • brand palettes
      • dark/light theme switching
      • project-wide search/replace
      • comp inheritance

      …would probably save more real production hours than half the headline AI tools combined.

        K-Marz
        K-Marz
        Participant
        April 16, 2026

        Agreed, this should be a top priority for Adobe to include in future versions of A. We should be able to easily and accurately apply colours in AE the same way we can do it in Illustrator or InDesign: just click the colour in the library and it applies to your selected shape, type, etc.
        The current workflow of using the eyedropper to select a colour from a library isn’t efficient or effective because it doesn’t accurately represent the chosen colour – colours are always a bit off/darker/less saturated – which means the colour values then need to be changed manually every time to maintain brand integrity and colour accuracy. This is a huge waste of time and could be easily solved to align with colour pickers/swatches within other Adobe apps.

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