InDesign Colour Theme Tool

The InDesign Colour Theme Tool Tutorial is part of the two minute tut’s series aimed at showing you how to use one tool, one feature or one technique in two minutes or under. It’s possible it could run to three minutes but whose really counting. InDesign is full of these wonderful little gems and this always a popular feature on the InDesign Introduction Course. 

The aim of these tiny InDesign tutorials is to cover something simple and easy but quickly and thoroughly so you know exactly how to work with that specific element.

Lets get cracking.

How do you use the Colour Sample Tool in InDesign?

First create your spread or layout then go to the File menu and Place an image as normal (Control /Command D)

Go to the Tools menu and select the Colour Sample Tools from the Tools Menu

! – Shortcut Key is Shift + I or simply I for the Eyedropper

Hold down the icon to reveal the tools as shown below 

Selecting using Colour Theme

You can select either from a whole image or from a selection of an image

Click and drag over a specific area (as shown in the image below) to select and the flyout menu will appear

Colour Theme Flyout Menu

There’s more to the Flyout menu that first meets the eye – click on the right facing arrow to reveal more theme choices

Simply scroll down to choose the one you prefer which in this instance was Bright

Colour Themes can easily be added to the Swatch Panel or a Creative Cloud Library as can be seen above and saved and reused as often as you like. Just click on the icons to add.

Photo Credit: Matheus Bertelli /Pexels

Colour Theme Tips

!- Click once to select the whole image

!- Click and Drag over area you want to select

!- Using I will let you toggle between InDesign’s Eyedropper & Themes

!- Hold down Alt will clear the theme for a new selection

On a last note

Both the colour theme tool and eyedropper are covered in depth on the InDesign Introduction Course

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