Why are color libraries and swatches in adobe so overly complicated?

[Ibo Vis]

Why are color libraries and swatches in adobe so overly complicated?

Trying to use swatches you saved in your CC library is a complete mess and really frustrating. None of the color tools inside your adobe apps have access to these swatches no matter the adobe app. Dragging these swatches into your swatches or gradient panels does not even work. The color picker only has access to color libraries stored as colorbook .ACB files. There is no way to export a group of CC library swatches into to the swatches panel or as colorbook file. Maybe it is just me or this adobe color ecosystem is a hot pile of male bovine doodoo to put it politely. New features get introduced without making sure they properly replace or are compatible with old features. If it is too hard at least give us some proper export or conversion options. Please!

[Derek Cross]

Welcome to this friendly forum.

Photoshop is the industry standard professional raster graphics editor with a steep learning curve. You need to get some training to overcome your frustration.
Linkedin Learning have excellent step-by-step video tutorials such as: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/photoshop-2023-essential-training?trk=learning-serp_learning-searc...

And you can get 30 days free access!

Of course, return here with specific questions if/when you get stuck – have fun.

[kevin stohlmeyer · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ibo Vis this may be of some help. Clicking the individual swatch should automatically change the foreground color in Photoshop. If not, in the Library right click the swatch and choose "Set Color" to pick up the color in your current document.

Exporting a group of colors has been an issue for a while and promoted in this Ideas post: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-ideas/how-to-get-colors-from-library-into-swatche...

[Ibo Vis]

Dear Derek,

Thank you for your friendly passive aggressive answer. If you would have read my post perhaps you could have concluded that I myself am an experienced professional with a decent understanding of how the software works. I am merely pointing out faults in the design of the software that need to be dealt with by the development team. But perhaps your age has made it difficult to read properly and you don’t know how to enlarge the fonts on your screen yet. Therefore I have kindly enlarged the size of the font so you don’t need to.  Please follow these links to learn how to enlarge links inside your operating system of choice:
Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-the-size-of-text-in-windows-1d5830c3-eee3-8eaa-83....
Mac: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/text-items-screen-bigger-mchld786f2cd/mac#:~:text=Make%20te....

Of course, return here with specific questions if/when you get stuck – have fun.

[Eugene Tyson]

Can't help but say something here.

First of all it's unclear if you're a beginner or not. It's not clear in the opening post.

And the forum is full of advice and if the post is not for you then you don't have read it, use it, or reply to it, in fact you can ignore it or simply say thanks but not really what I was looking for.

Where Dereks post was not the answer you were looking for, your query on the forum will be indexed.for searching through the forum and external search engines, so it will probably help out another person some day.

I have posts form 15 years ago still getting likes.

Can you please tone done your posts and the hostility. We are volunteers and not Adobe staff. 

We all have different experiences and advice. And I don't like seeing fellow volunteers here being slapped on the wrist in fits of petulance.

If you have a better idea to how these features work you can submit them

Report bugs or make a feature request

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

But please do not insult or post mean spirited things, as the people here who are most helpful will probably end up not wanting to help you.

I hope that doesn't happen and I think you owe Derek an apology.

Up to you.

[Derek Cross]

Dear Abo

Thank you for your response.

[Ibo Vis]

Hi Kevin,

I am aware of how setting a color works thank you. The issue of exporting a group of colors and the lack of intercompatibility between the cloud library system and the program native systems is what I am talking about. Thank you for pointing out the other thread!

[davescm]

@Ibo Vis I see nothing wrong in Derek's answer. Your post does not give an indication of your experience, although it does contain language that is far from polite.

As for your reply, it is sarcastic to the point of breaking forum guidelines. I am therefore locking this thread before it deteriorates further.

Dave