Saving color swatches with groups

[ASilva]

Hi there, so ... ive been messing on illustrator trying to finish a work and i kinda am making two versions of it, one on my native language and one in english, and i need to go back and forth the two version so i can see if im not making any mistakes desing wise.

But a problem as surfaced ... ive created a bunch of swatches groups like the image bellow that i used on the project, but now that i want to go back and forth the versions, diferent files if i save the swathes when i open them again they apear all jumble together like a damn mosh pit in a heavy metal concert, and thats just makes it harder to spot the colors im trying to test and mess with.

Is there a way to keep the damn swatches in groups like the image abobe ??? i kinda like to see things nice and tidy when im doing something ... and im just not beeing able to keep this tidy 😞

Regards ASilva

EDIT: So since people are not understanding what i mean by "mosh pit in a heavy metal concert" i mean this.

I save the swatches normaly by going here

And i want to know if its possible to save them in groups like i did in the 1st image.

Am i making myself clear now ? if not please say so ... i can always try and post more screen shots.

[Ton Frederiks]

You may try this:

From the Swatches panel select: Select All Unused

Delete the swatches.

Select your artwork and click on the folder icon at the bottom of the Swatches panel.

This should create a color group from the colors in your selected artwork.

[Kurt Gold]

Frankly, as per your description and your screenshot I'm not quite sure if I understand your request.

Can you clarify and explain what you mean by a "mosh pit in a heavy metal concert". What exactly are you doing and what goes wrong or what unexpected things do happen?

Also, which version of Illustrator are you using?

[ASilva]

I believe i have replied to ur question by doing a edit on the 1st post.

Also the version is a recent one 2020, at least thats how it apear on my windows start program list.

[Kurt Gold]

That means that the colour group structure (folder by folder) disappears if you are saving the swatches as a library and then reopen that library?

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce that issue at the moment. Doing the same procedure, I get the intact structure.

Probably you are doing something different.

[ASilva]

the way i tried to do it was, i found a palete project open source on the net, then open it on illustrator, then created the groups of colors by selecting them as u see on the image, then tried to save them, and the result i as u see.

Is the process i did difrent then your in any way ??

[Kurt Gold]

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I don't know what is going wrong in your case.

Just can say that I export swatch libraries that include swatch group folders on a regular basis. When opening the libraries, the folder structure is intact as expected and obviously as desired by you.

One guess may be that you somehow are importing a swatch library into an Illustrator version that does not support swatch folders (actually folders in Illustrator's Swatches palette were introduced just a couple of years ago; older versions of Illustrator cannot read them).

Who knows.

[ASilva]

well that's wierd then, my illustrator is recent, so i should not be having this problem.

Any how, thanks for trying to help maybe someone else that might have the same problem and as a fix apears arround here 🙂

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

Well, if you don't mind, let's do a little experiment.

- Create a blank document.

- Go to the Swatches palette and delete everything that is inside the palette.

- Create a new Swatch folder (1) and put just one colour swatch into that folder.

- Create another Swatch folder (2) and include another colour swatch.

- Save that as a Swatch library (sl1).

- Create a new blank document.

- Import the Swatch library (sl1).

Are you know seeing the library with the folders (1) and (2) intact? Or not?

[ASilva]

Hi there sry for late reply, so i tried to do as u said.

I delete every thing 1st as u can see bellow, then i added 2 color 1 on each folder like u said and as u can see below as well

Then i opend a new document open the swatches and the ones i had deleted, were there, dont know if its normal or not tough, anyways i went and opend the saved library in fatc it was opened with folders but on a diferent tab as u can see bellow.

So i conclude that this "experiment" was sucessfull ?

Another thing i noticed while doing this could the problem im having be due to those white triangles on right inferior corner the colors of the question post ??

[Kurt Gold]

I like the term "successful experiment", so yes, let's call it successful.

At least you can see that basically swatch groups are retained when exporting swatch libraries, rather than just being converted into a heavy metal mosh pit.

The two icons at the top (right) of the Swatches palette do not have anything to do with your initial problem/request. They just change different view modes in the palette.

As mentioned, I can imagine that you somehow opened the library in an Illustrator version that does not support swatch groups. Or you just exported it to an .ai format that does not support them. Or it may be something else.

[ASilva · Accepted solution]

The problem i was having was from the diference of illustrator version on the files.