PDF (adobe.com)

Color Guide panel overview



Use the Color Guide panel as a tool for color inspiration while you create your artwork. The Color Guide panel suggests harmonious colors based on the current color in the Tools panel. You can use these colors to color artwork, or you can edit them in the Edit Colors/Recolor Artwork dialog box, or save them as swatches or swatch groups in the Swatches panel.

You can manipulate the colors that the Color Guide panel generates in several ways, including changing the harmony rule, or adjusting the variation type (such as tints and shades or vivid and muted), and the number of variation colors that appear.
Important: If you have artwork selected, clicking a color variation changes the color of the selected artwork, just like clicking a swatch in the Swatches panel.

A.
Harmony Rules menu and active color group

B.
Set as base color

C.
Active colors

D.
Color variations

E.
Limits colors to specified swatch library

F.
Edit Colors or Edit Or Apply Colors depending on selection (opens the colors in the Edit Colors/Recolor Artwork dialog box)

G.
Save group to Swatches panel

Note: To edit the selected color group, make sure that no artwork is selected and click the Edit Colorc button . To edit the selected color group and apply the edits to selected artwork, click the Edit Or Apply Colors button . For more information, see Edit colors in the Edit Color dialog box.

For a video on using the Color Guide to find and create color solutions, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0058.

Specify the type of color variations that appear in the panel

 Choose one of the following variations from the Color Guide panel menu:
Show Tints/Shades
Adds black to variations on the left and white to variations on the right

Show Warm/Cool
Adds red to variations on the left and blue to variations on the right

Show Vivid/Muted
Decreases the saturation toward gray in variations on the left and increases saturation toward gray in variations on the right

Note: If you’re using spot colors, use only the Tints/Shades variation and choose colors from the tint (right) side of the variation grid. All other variations cause spot colors to be converted to process.

Specify the number and range of color variations that appear in the panel

  1. Choose Color Guide Options from the Color Guide panel menu.

  2. Specify the number of colors you want to appear to the left and right of each color in the generated color group. For example, choose 6 if you want to see six shades darker and six shades lighter of each color.

    The original colors always appear down the center of the panel with a triangle directly above them, and the variations on those colors appear to the left and right of them.

  3. Drag the Range slider to the left to decrease the variance range or drag to the right to increase the range.

    Decreasing the range generates colors that are more similar to the originals.

    Adjusting the range of color variations