Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how to get
Adobe Illustrator to write out all the color codes of any logo or design that you might
be using...basically making a color chip guide.
And if you're used to creating brand style guides or anything like that, this is something
that you've probably already done a few times and you wish there's a faster way.
Now the only color that won't work is the hex code.
So those you would have to do manually.
Here's an example of what I mean.
In this color palette, we have 12 different colors, and we need to type out this color
information for each and every color.
And almost every brand style guide you come across has this color information in it.
The problem is, it's a pain to type all those out.
So I wanted to show you a quicker way to do it using a script by Katja Bjerrum.
I hope I pronounced that right over at productivista.com.
I'll put the link for that in the description below.
This is productivista.com, and I believe Katja is the one who created this script.
So check out her blog, it's pretty cool.
You can download the files right here, so they'll download into your downloads folder.
I'm going to click this little caret, and we'll do Show in Finder.
If you're not using Chrome, that's going to be in a little bit of a different place.
I'm going to double click this to open the ZIP file.
If you're on a PC, it's going to be a right click and maybe Extract or Extract All files.
Now we have a few different files in here.
We've got a script file a JSX.
And we also have an action file.
So we want to install both of these.
So let's go back to Illustrator, and first we need to find out where our script files
are stored.
So I'm going to go to File.
And I'll just search for one of these scripts that are already in here.
So I'll search for SaveDocsAsPDF.
And I have three on my Mac, and I can see the folder right here: Scripts, but this is
for Illustrator 2020.
So let me see if there's a newer one.
Ok, here's the 2021 one.
So I'm going to double click that, and it'll show me the path.
And I can just drop that, which I've already done right here inside that Script folder.
So on a Mac, it's going to be Applications, Adobe Illustrator 2021, or whatever your current
version is, Presets, en_US, and then Scripts.
Now on Windows, it's going to be something like Program Files, Adobe, Adobe Illustrator,
cc 2021, Presets, en_US and then Scripts.
So now when we restart Illustrator, it's going to be in the list.
So go ahead and do that.
I've already restarted, so when I go to File>Scripts, you can see it right here, and it's called
ColorList.
And it's always going to be in there until I update to a newer version of Illustrator,
and maybe even then it'll keep it.
Now I'll also want to load the action that came in that folder.
So I'll go to Window>Actions.
I'm going to pull this out here, and then we'll come up here to the top, we'll click
on the hamburger menu, go to >Load Actions.
Now we can find the AIA file.
This is probably going to be in your downloads, and just click that and open it.
And now we have our new action right in here.
Now you've got your folder, and then you've got the action inside it.
So I'm gonna double click over here to the right of the action, not on the name itself,
but over here.
And then I'm going to set a function key.
So I've set mine to Shift f2.
You'll just want to choose something you're not already using for something else.
And we'll say OK.
And now I'm going to open my logo that has all the colors that I want to grab.
I'm going to close my Actions.
Next, I'm going to open my Swatches panel.
I'll just pull it out.
That'll be under Window>Swatches if you're not seeing it over here.
If I use my Direct Selection tool to click on this, it's Pantone 225.
And all the other Pantone colors are in my swatches.
When you're creating a logo for someone, you usually want to use Pantone colors, because
those are standard colors that are the same for everyone.
And usually designers have a Pantone color swatch book that you can choose the colors
that you want, exactly.
So we'll want to grab all these Pantone colors and list those out.
I'll select my logo, and then I can just hit SHIFT f2.
It'll ask me about a color group.
And I'll say Ok, so it adds a color group with all those Pantones.
It creates this little color group and then it deletes the color group that was in the
swatch panel.
All right, so that is the first step getting those Pantone colors.
Now I want to get the RGB colors.
So I'm going to go to File>Document Color Mode and make sure it's set on RGB here.
Then I'll select all these swatches and just throw those away.
And that kind of removes the Pantone from your logo and now it's just RGB colors.
Now these are a group, and I'm just going to move them down a little bit.
I'll select all my colors again, and then hit SHIFT f2 again.
It's going to do the same thing, except this time, it's going to make RGB colors.
So we can see those here.
So I'll get those and move them over here.
And now we'll want to change our Document Color Mode to CMYK.
And do that one more time.
So I'll hit SHIFT f2.
It'll make a color group, and then put them in that same spot.
Ok, and here are my CMYK values.
Now I was having trouble with this.
I think Illustrator was being a little glitchy.
So I had to start a new document, copy and paste my design in there, throw away the swatches,
which for some reason, were still coming up in the swatch panel, and then run the action
from there, and then it was able to grab the CMYK values.
Now at this point, we have all the text that we need except for the hex codes, which we
have to do manually.
So what I want to do is put the RGB underneath the red color, and then the CMYK underneath
that, but I don't really have enough room.
So what I'm going to do is just select those with my Group selection, and then cut, paste
in front and group and then hide.
So that is CMD X or CTRL X, CMD F or CTRL F, CMD G or CTRL, G, and CMD 3, or CTRL 3
to hide.
And I actually have an action set up for that, so I'll just let it do that.
And then I'm going to unhide all with OPT CMD 3, or ALT CTRL 3 on a PC.
Ok, so now I can pull these down a little bit, or I can even move it quite a bit further
down.
In case you're wondering why you can't see my panels, I hit Tab to make those go away,
so you can see what I'm doing a little better.
But let's bring those back now by hitting Tab.
Ok, so I've got all of my colors selected, and I'm going to go to Align.
I'm going to align everything to the left.
And then I'm going to distribute the spacing by using this first one, which is Vertical
Distribute Space.
Now, if you're not seeing your Align panel, all of the panels are here under Window.
And if you're not seeing your Distribute Spacing, you can just come over here to the hamburger
menu and choose Show Options.
I'm going to delete the words Color Group, then I'll ungroup these, pull this one down
here, and then I'll pull this one down here.
We'll align to the left, and we'll distribute the spacing.
Maybe we can move this one up a little more.
I know I'm going pretty fast, but it's all just alignment and distribution.
I can get all of these where I want them.
Of course, if I want to distribute the spacing, I have to ungroup them, distribute, and then
I'll group these again, in case I want to move them together as a group.
Now I'm going to use my Group Selection tool to just get the text, move it out a little
bit and then move it up to match the color a little better.
So at this point, we could add our hex code.
And to get that, all you have to do is click on your red, come over here and double click,
and it's right down here.
So now you would want to play with the format.
So, as we saw on this example, they've got dots in between them.
And we've got the whole word CMYK instead of C equals, et cetera.
So we could do a find and replace and change all the R equals to RGB colon, or something
like that.
So let's do that.
We've got R equals, and we'll change all those to RGB colon space.
We'll Find and Replace All.
Now you can see we have a similar format as the other one.
We could find all the space G equals and change that to a comma space.
And then do the same with the B. So now we have RGB: 243, 39, 53.
We could also do that with the Pantone so that it matches.
And I'm going to quickly go through and find and replace this so it has the same look as
the above as the Pantone in RGB.
All right, so that's it.
Now we have our list of colors.
For everything that was in this logo.
Of course, we'll still need to add the hex code.
We can't really do that automatically, like we did with the other colors.
So you would just have to go in and find out the hex codes and add those.
But I think this way of doing it with the script and the action is so much faster than
actually clicking on each one, copying all this information and entering it one by one.
So thank you to Katja Bjerrum over at productivista.com for speeding up the process of creating color
guidelines for a brand book.
All right, if you liked this video and you want to see more
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All right, I'll see you in the next video.
Thank you!!!