In a previous tip, I discussed “knowhow,” one the panels found under the Window menu > Adobe Labs. The second Adobe Labs panel, found in the same submenu, is called kuler, which is a feed from Adobe’s kuler website. Kuler is an amazing website community that’s a great resource for color exploration, inspiration, and experimentation, as well as sharing of color combinations with other members – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/kuler If you’ve used Live Color, you’re already familiar with many of the kuler tools. Any of the color combinations listed in the kuler panel in Illustrator (highest rated, newest, most popular) can be saved to your Swatches panel as a Color Group simply by clicking the Swatches button at the bottom of the panel. You can also join the website to participate in the kuler community and download your favorite color combinations to load into Illustrator, InDesign and other Creative Suite applications.
Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since.
Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination.
Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the “go to” guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics.
As an Adobe Certified Expert, he’s provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
