Whether you’re meandering through Mother Nature or sitting at your laptop perusing the internet, there’s one thing you can’t escape: color. In fact, the average human eye can distinguish more than one million colors!
So, how do we actually represent such huge diversity of color? And, how do we draw from so many colors to create art, build brands, and beautify the world around us? Oftentimes, it starts with a color swatch.
Read on for a quick primer on both the theory and the practice of color swatches, including:
- What is a color swatch?
- How do we use color swatches?
- How to apply a color swatch to designs
- How to make your own color swatch palette
The Basics: What Is a Color Swatch?
In the simplest terms, a color swatch is a representation of a specific hue pulled from the color wheel. Color swatches are typically displayed in the form of small squares or rectangles, and they’ll often be labeled with specific color values (e.g. CMYK, RGB, or a hex code) and sometimes a color name (e.g. Butter Yellow or Port Wine).
Color swatches can be physical or digital.
Physical Color Swatches
In the physical world, color swatches are most commonly used with arts and crafts or interior design.
Case in point: Those little square paint samples you can pick up at your local home improvement store when you’re wanting to revamp your living room. Or, those big heavy books with samples of fabric, thread, paint, or pen ink that you can use to color-match items.
Digital Color Swatches
In the digital world, color swatches work very similarly to physical color samples—only they’re displayed on your screen. Color swatches are a key feature of any art or graphic design program, from the complex swatch panels of Adobe programs to the more user-friendly editor of Shutterstock Create.
Unlike physical color swatches in which you’re limited to whatever the manufacturer offers, digital color swatches are virtually unlimited. Modern computers can display over 16 million colors, so you can build out a massive variety of custom color combinations—either manually or through an automatic color palette generator.
How and Why Do We Use Color Swatches?
Whether you’re a hairdresser, an artist, or a solopreneur DIYing your brand, color swatches are essential to anyone who works with color. And, since color is everywhere, that’s pretty much all of us!
Color swatches are often used to:
- Compare similar variations of the same hue (to choose the preferred one)
- Maintain 100% color consistency across your own design projects
- Share a specific color with another firm or creator (and know that the final color will be accurate)
- Build a mood board for a brand, interior design, artwork, or fashion line
- Display on a color swatch palette*
*Wondering, What is a color swatch palette? We’re covering this at the very end of the article. So, stay tuned!
How to Make and Apply Color Swatches in Create
If a color swatch is simply a representation of color, then the more practical application for creators is this: Applying that color swatch to elements in a design. In the physical world, this might mean painting your wall Slate Blue rather than Steel Blue. In the digital world, this might mean changing the color of text on your business flyer.
Here’s how to apply digital color swatches in Shutterstock Create.
1. Get Started
Start a new project, either from a blank canvas from the Create homepage or from an artist-designed template.
2. Select Any Colored Element
From your canvas, select any element with a color fill (e.g. a textbox or a shape). Then click Change color from the top menu to open the color menu.
3. Apply an Existing Swatch or Make a New One
From the Color menu at the left, there are several easy ways to apply a new color swatch:
- Canvas Colors: Click on an existing swatch to apply that color, or click the + button to add a new swatch to your palette. Then click the swatch to apply the color.
- Photo Colors: This color swatch palette is automatically generated from the images in your design! Click any swatch to apply the color.
- Presets: Click any swatch to apply the color.
That’s it! You can repeat the steps above to change the color of any element on your canvas. Each time you create a new color swatch, it’ll be automatically saved to your Color menu at the left—building out your color swatch palette as you design.
But wait . . . what is a color swatch palette? Glad you asked!
What Is a Color Swatch Palette?
Sometimes called a “swatch library” or a “color library,” a color swatch palette is simply a collection of saved color swatches.
Color palettes are necessary because you’ll never use a single color in isolation—you’ll always be combining multiple hues, shades, and tones in any given design. Even monochromatic designs often have five or more variations of the same base hue!
Color swatch palettes are especially useful if you need to share your design with others. For instance, you might show off a color library to communicate a client’s brand vision or to help you decorate your home office.
How to Make an Exportable Color Swatch Palette in Create
As noted above, Create will automatically build out your color palette library as you work on a design. All of the colors you’ve used will be saved to your Color menu so you can easily apply new colors while staying within your set theme.
However, if you’d like to export your color palette (either for yourself or to share), then you can quickly create a downloadable palette in the Create editor.
Here’s how:
- Click + Pages in the bottom-right and add a new page.
- On the new page, click Shapes from the left menu and drag any shape to your canvas.
- Select the shape and then click Change color from the top menu.
- Click any color swatch from the Color menu to apply the color.
- Repeat steps 2–4 for all of the color swatches in your palette library.
- Optional: Click Text to add textboxes labeling your colors by hex code and/or name.
- Click Download in the upper-right and save your file.
Not sure which colors to include as you build out your brand’s color palette? Start with the color wheel!
Even More Ways to Manipulate Color
Applying color swatches and building color palettes is just one way to play with color in Create. There’s a whole lot more, too:
- Swap out colors in photos using the Color Changer tool.
- Instead of filling text or shapes with solid colors, use the Fill with image or Textures features.
- Apply gradients to anything by switching from the Solid tab to the Gradient tab of the Color menu.
- Subtly adjust the hue, saturation, and other aspects of photos using Photo Filters.
No matter what you’re creating, color is foundational—so make the most of it with Create’s color swatches. Give it a try for yourself!
License this cover image mockup via Luis Molinero and sfotoz.
