Chapter 7: Creating Layout Standards
205
3.
Type the distance between grid lines in the Gridline Every field. If your basic mea-
surement unit is an inch, you probably want to use the default value of 1 inch.
4.
Type the number of divisions between grid lines in the Subdivisions field. If your
basic measurement unit is an inch, you can specify a value of 6 to subdivide the grid into
1-pica squares. Or, if you prefer, you can type a value of 4, 8, 16, and so on to subdivide
the grid into standard divisions of an inch.
5.
Click OK to close the dialog box and return to the document.
Tip
The Show/Hide Document Grid command (choose View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Show/Hide Document Grid or
Ô+' [apostrophe] or Ctrl+' [apostrophe]) lets you display and hide the document grid. n
Snapping to guides
If the Snap to Guides command (choose View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Snap to Guides or press
Shift+@cmd+; [semicolon] or Ctrl+Shift+; [semicolon]) is selected, object edges snap to guidelines
and grids when you drag them in the snap zone. To specify the snap zone (the distance — in pixels —
at which an object snaps to a guide), choose InDesign ➪ Preferences ➪ Guides & Pasteboard or
press Ô+K on the Mac, or choose Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ Guides & Pasteboard or press Ctrl+K
in Windows, and type a value in the Snap to Zone field in the Guide Options section of the
dialog box.
Setting the snap zone is just the first step. You must turn on the snap-to feature in InDesign as well
for whichever elements you want to snap to:
l
For guidelines and baseline grids, be sure Snap to Guides is turned on. Choose
View ➪ Guides & Grids ➪ Snap to Guides or press Shift+Ô+; (semicolon) or Ctrl+Shift+;
(semicolon). Note that the guidelines must be visible for objects to snap to them; to make
them visible, choose View ➪ Guides & Grids ➪ Show Guides or press Ô+; (semicolon) or
Ctrl+; (semicolon), but the baseline grid need not be visible.

IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting acquainted with color
terminology
Making sense of process and
spot colors
Working with color models
in InDesign
Defining colors and tints
Mixing colors
Importing colors from files
Sampling colors from images
Understanding color issues
in imported graphics
Working with gradients
Editing, copying, and deleting
swatches
Applying colors, tints, and
gradients
W
hether you want to produce limited-run documents on a color
printer, create newsletters using spot colors, publish magazines
and catalogs using process colors and special inks, or produce
documents to be distributed electronically on computer screens, InDesign
offers the tools that you need to do the job well.
In printing, color is a complex issue, which involves both physics and chem-
istry. The inks that produce color are designed chemically to retain those
colors and to produce them evenly so that your images don’t look mottled or
faded. How light reflects off of ink and paper to your eye determines the
color you see, and many factors (particularly different textures of paper) can
affect the physics of how the light carries the color.

black. These four colors are known as process colors.
l
Color gamut: The range of colors that a device, such as a monitor or a color printer, can
produce. Each color model has a different color gamut.
l
Color model: An industry standard for specifying a color, such as CMYK or Pantone.
l
Color separation: A set of four photographic negatives, one filtered for each process
color, shot from a color photograph or image. When combined, the four negatives repro-
duce that original image.
l
Color space: A method of representing color in terms of measurable values, such as the
amount of red, yellow, and blue in a color image. The color space RGB represents the red,
green, and blue colors on video screens.
l
Four-color printing: The use of the four process colors in combination to produce most
other colors.
l
Lab: A standard that specifies colors by one lightness coordinate (indicating luminance, the
intensity of the light) and two color coordinates, green-red and blue-yellow. The name
refers to the mathematical approach used to describe the colors in a cubic arrangement:
luminance, a-axis (green-red), and b-axis (blue-yellow); thus the term Lab. Note that you
may see the term CIE Lab in other programs and in some design books; it’s the same thing
as Lab; CIE means Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage (International Committee on
Illumination), the international standards group that created the Lab specification.
l
Process color: Any of the four primary colors in publishing — cyan, magenta, yellow,
and black (known collectively as CMYK).
l
RGB: The standard used by monitors, and the abbreviation from the three colors in it:

This section briefly explores the differences between spot and process colors, the two primary ways
of indicating color in print documents.
Identifying methods of color printing
Several forms of color are used in printing, but the two most prevalent ones are process color and
spot color.
Process color is the use of four basic colors — cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (known collectively
as CMYK) — mixed to reproduce most color tones the human eye can see. A separate negative is
produced for each of the four process colors. This method, often called four-color printing, is used
for most color publishing.
Note
As with CMYK colors, RGB and Lab colors are created by mixing colors; however, InDesign refers to RGB and
Lab colors as mixed colors, leaving the term process color for CMYK because that’s an industry-standard term
for CMYK. n
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Spot color is any color ink — whether one of the process colors or some other hue — used for spe-
cific elements in a document. For example, if you print a document in black ink but print the com-
pany logo in red, the red is a spot color. A spot color is often called a second color even though you
can use several spot colors in a document. Each spot color is output to its own negative (and not
color-separated into CMYK). Using spot color gives you access to special inks that are truer to the
desired color than any mix of process colors can be. These inks come in several standards and
include metallics, neons, and milky pastels. You even can use varnishes as spot colors to give lay-
out elements a different gleam from the rest of the page. Although experienced designers some-
times mix spot colors to produce special shades not otherwise available, you probably won’t need
to do so.
There are several advantages to spot colors. You can use colors like metallic inks that are impossi-
ble to create with CMYK. Also, your printed results will be more consistent than with CMYK sepa-
rations, which can suffer from color shift (variation in the hue produced) over the length of a long

Converting spot color to process color
InDesign can convert spot colors to process colors. This handy capability lets designers specify the
colors they want through a system with which they’re familiar, such as Pantone, without the added
expense of special spot-color inks and extra negatives. Conversions are never an exact match, but
guidebooks are available that can show you in advance the color that will be created. And with sev-
eral Pantone and HKS variations, designers can pick a Pantone or HKS color that color-separates
predictably.
You can set InDesign to convert some spot colors in a document to process colors while leaving
others alone: Just use the Color Mode pop-up menu in the Swatch Options dialog box, covered
later in this chapter. (For example, you can keep a metallic silver as a spot color so it prints with a
metallic ink, rather than be converted to a grayish color that is the closest the CMYK colors can
produce to simulate a silver. However, you would convert common colors such as deep blue, pur-
ple, and green to process colors, because the CMYK inks can combine fairly accurately to repro-
duce them.) You can also leave all spot colors as spot colors or convert all spot colors to process
colors.
Caution
Colors defined in one model and converted to another may not reproduce exactly the same because the phys-
ics underlying each color model differ slightly. Each model was designed for use in a different medium, such as
with paper or on a video monitor. n
Working with Color Models
Once you understand color terminology and the difference between process and spot colors, you
can start thinking about the type of colors you create in InDesign. (You define colors in the
Swatches panel, as described later in this chapter.) The color models fall into two broad classes:
l
Those that let you define a color by selecting a color from a color wheel (which represents a
spectrum of available colors) or by entering specific values for the color’s constituent colors
(the colors that make up the color), which include CMYK, RGB, Lab, and Multi-Ink.
l
Those that have a predefined set of colors, which you select from a palette of swatches.
These swatches include ANPA (American Newspaper Publishers Association, now called

InDesign uses the same swatch format as Illustrator, so you can import color models into InDesign created in
or for Illustrator. InDesign also supports the Adobe Swatch Exchange (
.ase
) format that all Adobe CS2, CS3,
CS4, and CS5 applications that have color libraries support for color exchange. n
Anyone who uses a lot of color should have a color swatchbook handy. You probably can get one at
your local art supply store or from your commercial printer (prices typically range from $50 to $100,
depending on the color model and the type of swatchbook). If you can’t find a swatchbook, here’s
where to order the most popular ones:
l
Pantone: Several Pantone swatchbooks are available, including ones for coated and uncoated
paper, and for spot-color output and process-color output. If you are converting (called build-
ing in publishing parlance) Pantone colors to CMYK for four-color printing, I particularly rec-
ommend the Pantone Formula Guide swatchbook series, which also indicates which colors
reproduce well on RGB devices such as computer monitors.
www.pantone.com
.
l
Trumatch: Based on a CMYK color space, Trumatch suffers almost no matching problems
when converted to CMYK. Variants of the swatchbooks for coated and uncoated paper are
available.
www.trumatch.com
.
l
ANPA: Designed for reproduction on newsprint, these colors also are designed in the Lab
color space. The NAA’s Web site (
www.naa.org
) unfortunately has no substantive informa-
tion on these colors.
l

the web-offset printing process used by magazines, catalog, and most high-run printing presses. n
l
Pantone Solid Coated: Use this variant when your printer uses actual Pantone-brand inks
(as spot colors) when printing to coated paper stock. Colors in this variant have the code
C appended to their names.
l
Pantone Solid Matte: This is the same as Pantone Coated but for paper with a matte
finish. Colors in this variant have the code M appended to their names.
l
Pantone Solid Uncoated: This is the same as Pantone Solid Coated but for uncoated
paper. Colors in this variant have the code U appended to their names.
l
Pantone Metallic Coated: This contains metallic colors designed for coated papers
(which helps make them shine like metal). Colors in this variant have the code C
appended to their names.
l
Pantone Pastel Coated: This contains pastel colors designed for coated papers (which helps
make them more lustrous). Colors in this variant have the code C appended to their names.
l
Pantone Pastel Uncoated: This contains pastel colors designed for uncoated papers
(which helps make them have the visual texture of eggshells). Colors in this variant have
the code U appended to their names.
l
Pantone Color Bridge: This contains Pantone solid colors that reproduce well with process col-
ors, for use on coated paper. Colors in this variant have the code PC appended to their names.
l
Dainippon Ink & Chemical (DIC): Like Pantone, the DIC color set is a spot-color-based system.
/>.
l
Toyo: Similar to Pantone in that it is based on spot-color inks, this model is popular in Japan.

have the code K appended to their names
l
HKS K Process: Use this HKS variant for glossy art paper (highly coated) printed with
process colors. Colors in this variant have the code K appended to their names.
l
HKS N: Use this HKS variant for natural paper (uncoated). Colors in this variant have the
code N appended to their names.
l
HKS N Process: Use this HKS variant for natural paper (uncoated) printed with process
colors. Colors in this variant have the code N appended to their names.
l
HKS Z: Use this HKS variant for newsprint. Colors in this variant have the code Z
appended to their names.
l
HKS Z Process: Use this HKS variant for newsprint printed with process colors. Colors in
this variant have the code Z appended to their names.
Note
When printing on uncoated stock with any colors designed for use on coated stock, you usually get weaker,
less-saturated color reproduction. n
Defining Colors and Tints
InDesign comes with a few predefined colors: [Black], [Registration] (black on each negative for
the printing press), [Paper] (white), [None] (transparent), and six common colors: cyan, magenta,
yellow, red, green, and blue. So you most likely want to add a few of your own.
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Chapter 8: Defining Colors, Tints, and Gradients
215
New Feature
The six common colors’ names differ based on whether you created your document with a Print or Web intent,
as explained in Chapter 4. If you created a document with a Print intent, the color swatches are based on their

color-separated in some documents and kept as a spot color in others.
Note
If no document is open when you create, edit, or delete colors, the new color palette becomes the default for
all future documents. n
Creating colors the ideal way: The Swatches panel
The best way to create colors in InDesign is to use the Swatches panel. All colors in this panel get a
unique name and are tracked by InDesign. That means each such color is available to be used on
any object in your document, with no risk of having slightly different variants. Plus, you can
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
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modify a swatch and ensure that all objects using that swatch are updated, and you can delete a
swatch and tell InDesign what color to use in its place. Furthermore, when you print, you have
control over how each color is handled (whether it is printed to its own plate, whether it is printed
at all, and whether there should be any adjustments to its ink density or screening angle). The top
of Figure 8.1 shows the Swatches panel.
FIGURE 8.1
Top left: The Swatches panel and its flyout menu. Top right: The various swatch type indicators in the
Swatches panel. Bottom: The new mini-Swatches panel in the Control panel.
Process color
RGB color
CMYK color
Show All Swatches
Show Color Swatches
Show Gradient Swatches
Create New Swatch
Delete Selected Swatches
Mixed-ink group
Spot color

In the Color Mode pop-up menu, choose the mixing system or swatch library (both
are considered to be color models) you want to use: CMYK, RGB, Lab, or a swatch-
based model. (These are covered earlier in this chapter.)
You can change the appearance of the entries in the Swatches panel (and mini-Swatches panel) by
using the three options in the panel’s flyout menu: Name (the default), Small Name (a tighter list view),
Small Swatch (no names, just small icons), and Large Swatch (no names, just larger icons).
Also, use the Hide Options menu to suppress the display of the Stroke, Fill, Formatting Affects Container,
and Formatting Affects Text iconic buttons and the Tint field and pop-up menu; choosing Show Options
brings them back.
Finally, you can use the Show All Swatches, Show Color Swatches, and Show Gradient Swatches
iconic buttons at the bottom of the panel to control what swatches appear.
Personalizing the Swatches Panel
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FIGURE 8.2
The New Color Swatch dialog box lets you define colors. (At left is the dialog box for
CMYK color mixing; at right is the dialog box for the swatch-based spot colors such as
Pantone colors.) An identical dialog box named Swatch Options lets you edit them.
You can name a CMYK, RGB, or Lab color anything you want. (Colors defined in other models use their
official names, such as Pantone 147U or ANPA 1732-4 AdPro.) To make it easier to remember what a
defined color looks like, you should use either descriptive names (such as Grass Green or Official Logo
Blue) or use names based on the color settings. Choose one naming convention to keep things consistent.
The benefit of using descriptive names is that they have intrinsic meaning, which helps designers
choose the right one. For example, there’s no confusion that Official Logo Blue is the color to be used
for the company logo, but the proper usage of the same color using a name based on its color values
won’t be so obvious.
The benefit of using color-value names is that designers who do a lot of color work know what that
color is. Grass Green could be any of several colors, but C=30 M=0 Y=50 K=5 can be only one color.

Extensions ➪ Kuler). Note that you must have an active Internet connection to be able to use the
Kuler panel.
You go to the Browse pane in the Kuler panel and choose from the color swatch palettes — called
themes — already there. You can use the unlabeled pop-up menus at top and the search field to
narrow down your choices. Click one you want and then click the Add Selected Theme to
Swatches iconic button at the bottom right of the panel. Repeat for each theme you want to copy.
You can create your own themes in the Create pane (as well as edit an existing theme; click the
Edit Theme in Create Pane iconic button in the Browse pane to do so). First, be sure a document is
open — you cannot add Kuler colors to the Swatches panel if no document is open, even though
you can create swatches in the Swatches panel when no document is open so that they become
default colors for all new documents.
You start the Kuler theme creation with the Base Color, the one that determines the starting point
for the theme and any constraints applied to it. Use the color wheel and sliders to select a new
value, or drag its current color (the circles) to a new location on the wheel. There are also two
iconic buttons that let you take the color of a selected object and make that the base color: Add
Current Fill Color as Base Color and Add Current Stroke Color as Base Color.
To add colors, click the Add a New Color to the Theme iconic button. Kuler has a maximum of
five colors per theme. You can delete a color by selecting it and then clicking the Remove This
Color from the Theme iconic button.
You can have Kuler constrain your color choices using the Select Rule pop-up menu, which has seven
options: Analogous, Monochromatic, Triad, Complementary, Compound, Shades, and Custom. As you
choose each one, you see its effect on your color choices. (Custom lets you choose any colors.) You can
also constrain color options using the Affect the Other Colors in the Theme Based on a Harmony iconic
button; this has Kuler change the colors to what it considers “harmonious.”
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You can apply a color at any time to a selected object in your layout by double-clicking the desired
swatch in the Kuler panel. Note that this does not add the color to the Swatches panel automati-

Leaf Green 66% swatch (which would be equivalent to a 22 percent tint of the original Leaf Green). n
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Chapter 8: Defining Colors, Tints, and Gradients
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FIGURE 8.3
The Kuler panel lets you copy predefined themes (left) — sets of colors — as well as create and even share
your own (right).
Add Current Fill Color as Base Color
Add Current Stroke as Base Color
Affect the Other Colors in the
Theme Based on a Harmony
Add a New Color to this Theme
Remove This Color from the Theme
Brightness slider
View Previous Set of Themes
View Next Set of Themes
Refresh the Themes
Edit Theme in Create Pane
Add Selected Theme
to Swatches
Add This Theme to Swatches
Upload Theme to Kuler
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FIGURE 8.4
The New Tint Swatch dialog box lets you define colors; a nearly identical dialog box named Swatch
Options lets you edit them. The difference is that, when editing, you can change all the other color values,

ink groups, which are a series of colors based on a spot color and one or more default process col-
ors. Figure 8.6 shows the New Mixed Ink Group dialog box, in which you select the colors to mix
as you do in the New Mixed Ink Swatch dialog box. This feature is handy to create a palette of col-
ors within a color range by mixing several colors in different amounts, as well as to create color
combinations known as duotones (a spot color traditionally mixed with black) and tritones (two
spot colors traditionally mixed with black).
However, you do more than simply mix the colors. In this dialog box, you specify an initial tint for
each color you want to mix, then how many times you want to create a color using it, as well as the
increment of color for each creation. This can be confusing, so I walk you through the options in
Figure 8.6.
The spot color Fire Orange is chosen with an Initial value of 50 percent, a Repeat setting of 3, and
an Increment of 20 percent. Also chosen is the Process Black swatch, with an Initial value of 0 per-
cent, a Repeat setting of 3, and an Increment of 10 percent. This combination creates 16 mixed-ink
swatches, as shown in the Swatch Preview section (click Preview Swatches to display the preview
colors in the Swatch Preview section of the dialog box).
InDesign uses the settings and first mixes 50 percent of Fire Orange with 0 percent Process Black.
That’s one swatch. Then it mixes 50 percent of Fire Orange with 10 percent of Process Black (add-
ing the increment of 10 percent). It does so two more times, for 20 and 30 percent of Process Black
mixed with the 50 percent of Fire Orange because there was a Repeat setting of 3. (Note that
InDesign stops at 100 percent saturation even if the Increment results in a higher number.)
So that’s four mixed-ink swatches based on 50 percent of Fire Orange. InDesign now repeats this pro-
cess three more times, starting with the next increment for Fire Orange: The result is one set of four
swatches using 70 percent Fire Orange, one set using 90 percent Fire Orange, and the final set using
100 percent Fire Orange (in addition to the first set using 50 percent Fire Orange) — note that a color’s
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
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value can’t exceed 100 percent, so even though the math would make Fire Orange be 110 percent for
this final set of swatches, InDesign caps the value to 100 percent. So that’s a total of 16 swatches.