Often, a brochure, an annual report, indeed any piece of information that uses artwork to illustrate content and juice up presentation, will benefit from colours that are harmonious. It goes even further than that: clashing colour schemes can have their appeal, but in publishing for print or web, such colour schemes are proof of amateurism.

While Adobe’s colour swatch system isn’t open to other applications besides Adobe’s, Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign CS3 all share the same colour swatch exchange format, making it easy to create art that harmonises with all other art in a layout.

Illustrator CS3 is a good place to start with colour, because it has a new feature, called Live Color. Live Color enables users to create harmonious colour schemes. By unlinking the over a dozen harmony rules, they can also create clashing colour schemes. But the crux of the matter is that colour schemes are saved to colour swatches. In Creative Suite, those swatches can be exchanged with the other Adobe software. The most common workflow for colour harmonies in Illustrator is:

• you select the artwork that has the colour which you want to use as a basis for the harmony
• you open the Color Guide
• use Live Color and experiment with harmony rules and the colour wheel until you find a set that looks pleasing or complies with your requirements
• create a Colour Group
• save to a colour swatch for later use
• save as a colour swatch in ASE format (Adobe Swatch Exchange)
• apply to your artwork throughout the publication, regardless whether you’re using Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign.

The Live Color palette has an anatomy that you must first understand to make good use of all its features. Download the (14MB) Live Color QuickTime presentation to see a quick glance of the palette’s anatomy.

In Illustrator you can save your colour group to an ASE swatch. In the Live Color dialogue, click the “add folder” icon at the top right after giving your colour group a name. The colour group will appear in the list, and when you close the Live Color dialogue, you will notice it has been added automatically to the colour swatches palette.

To save this group as an ASE swatch, click the palette’s actions menu icon at top right and select the ASE option near the bottom of the list.

Now you can open this swatch in Photoshop or InDesign by going to the colour swatch palette in that application and clicking on the Load Swatches option of the palette’s action menu. The colour group will appear in the swatches list.

You can then apply colours from the colour group, and be assured they will match those --or at least not clash unintentionally-- with other artwork.