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Adobe Illustrator/Selection of colors for use in brochures and website

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Expert: - 9/26/2009


Question

Sample of color scheme
Hello, Kevin,

Thanks for taking the time to read this email.  I'm creating company brochures and a website - currently, I'm working specifically on color schemes, so I've been browsing various sites that can help.  One of them is Adobe Kuler, found at kuler.adobe.com.

The site offers wonderful five-color schemes, and I want to offer some of these as examples of what we can use.  So, I'm creating .pdf files in Adobe Illustrator that contain rows of five colored squares - each row represents one of the color schemes.  The colors are created by copying the numeric values that are shown on the site.  Eventually, I'll show these color schemes to other members in my team.

Questions:
-What's the best way to do this?
-If I copy the RGB numeric values for each color, will this action produce different results for an on-screen website and printed brochures?
-Should I copy the RGB values for the website colors and CMYK values for the brochures?
-How come the RGB values and CMYK values for the same colors result in such drastic differences when I enter them into Adobe Illustrator?
-Would you opt for a completely different approach?  I suppose I could just direct my teammates to kuler.adobe.com and save myself a lot of time and hassle.  But where's the fun in that?

Cheers.

Sajid

Answer
Hi Sajid,

You are heading down the right path - I would create this using Illustrator. Only because you can then save the swatches in the swatches palette as a group and export the groups out as an ASE file (Adobe Swatch Exchange). You can then distribute this file and have your team load the swatches in using their app.

Second, definitely use RGB for web only and CMYK for print only. These will be different depending on what colors you use. I can go into a deep explanation of subtractive vs. additive colors but in the end, they will be different.

Did you know you can load up your swatches to Kuler and share them that way as well? Try it - that is the fun in it!

Thanks

Kevin

Kevin Stohlmeyer

Expertise

I am an Adobe Certified Instructor. I can answer all your questions about Adobe Illustrator version 8 through the new Adobe CS5 versions.

Experience

I am an Adobe Certified Instructor for Adobe Illustrator and have been teaching this application to college students for the past 6 years. I now teach this as a corporate instructor.

Organizations
Milwaukee Adobe Users Group National Association of Photoshop Professionals C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions

Education/Credentials
BA - Graphic Design Adobe Certified Instructor - Illustrator Adobe Community Professional

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