Adding colors to palette

Hello paul-uk,

when you have a color you want to save, drag and drop it from the big color well beside the color examine/pick icon and drop it in one of the color palette fields.

If you have found a color and want to have it in the big color well, click on the color examine/pick icon. Now your mouse cursor appearance changed to the examine/pick tool. move the center of the examine tool over the color you want to select and press the mouse button. The color appears in the big color well. By the way, you can pick every part you can see on the screen, not only from the Pages app, that is a very useful system wide tool.

Unfortunately Pages can't handle Pantone colors. I have tried a lot to bring that to work - without success. I think this will never be a part of Pages color handling, because the license costs are too high for a $35 app. But if you find a way to handle full tone colors, please let us know. I think there are more users interested in that then we two.

Frank.

There's another trick I just figured out because I too wanted to get Pantone color swatches into Pages. This is a more permanent way of keeping your colors (but it's also a bit tedious!).

1. Using Photoshop, Illustrator, or some other program that supports Pantone color, make a document with the Pantone colors that you want to use. (Just make a bunch of shapes, each filled with a different color--be sure to label the colors.)

2. Drop that "Color Sampler" graphic into a Pages document.

3. Open up the Colors inspector and select the "Color Palette" icon (3rd from the left) > Where is says "List" select "New" from the dialog box.

4. Using the magnifying glass select one of the colors in your document--it should appear in the rectangular box in the Colors inspector.

5. Select "New" from the dialog box next to the Search window in the inspector and the color should show up (named "Untitled") in the blank space > Select "Rename" in the Color dialog box > Type in the Pantone name/number.

6. Once you've got all your colors in the collection, you can rename the collection using the "List" dialog box.

I hope this helps!


iBook G4 w/ SuperDrive (February 2005) Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hello JamGirl,

this sounds very interesting. But I have checked a Pages PDF with Illustrator and a text editor, but I couldn't find the separation section with the info of the Pantone color ID, but a CMYK info.

Have you printed a document with a Pantone color in it, so you can be sure it is the full tone color in the printed sheet and not a CMYK color?

Well, the problem is that when you print from a desktop printer, the colors will always be CMYK because the printer cartridges don't come in spot colors, so a lot just depends on your printer.

One way to test the colors would be to compare the printer output with a Pantone swatch book, which I don't have. I used my color picker method to make some invitations because just eyeballing the color based on what looked good on the screen did NOT work and my little method was the only way I could get close to Pantone colors in Pages. The colors on the final printout were definitely more robust and bright after I'd changed them using this method.

I guess I could try recreating the document in InDesign using ID's original Pantone swatches and see how they compare.

Since I'm not working in the design industry, I don't have to be very accurate with my colors--I just wanted some way of being able to approximate Pantone in Pages because the Crayons palette is far too limited and using ID for every little document where I want to add color is silly.

Hello JamGirl,

of course you have to use a professional printer, because no home printer is able to print fulltone colors. And there is unfortunately no way to test the colors with Pantone color fans or other kinds of printed material comparison. I think there are some pro tools to check PDF or PS files for colors and fonts. I will see if I can get some and I will notice you what the result is.

The comparison with Illustrator shows a significant difference, so I think Pages is not able to handle Pantone colors.

By the way: if you need to clear one of the fields, grab a white empty field and drag'n'drop it over the color, it will erase it.