In our previous post, we mastered the art of creating and manipulating shapes and lines by resizing and rotating them. We will continue the same progress, and in this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add colours to fills and strokes to objects and text in Adobe InDesign.
You’ll learn a few different ways to customize your colours, from using the colour picker window to the swatches flyout menu. Plus, we’ll walk you through the process of adjusting stroke thickness and style to make your designs stand out. Get ready to take your InDesign skills to the next level and make your designs shine!
When you’re working on objects or text frames, you can change the stroke colour (which is the outline) or the fill colour (which is the colour that fills the object or text frame). Alright, to tweak the look of a design element, there are two key things we gotta do. First off, we gotta make sure that the fill thumbnail is in the front so we know it’s active. If the stroke thumbnail is in the front, then any colour we choose will only apply to the stroke. But if we wanna change the fill, we gotta make sure the fill thumbnail is front and center and then we can go ahead and pick the colour we want.
The only thing you need to do is click on either the fill or stroke to have the active element of colour.
You can change these colours in a few different ways, but make sure the object you want to colour is selected:
- By selecting the colour icons in the control panel. Click on the arrow to open the colour swatches or double-click them to open the colour picker window. You can either select a colour from the colour spectrum or enter a specific colour value in the RGB or HSB fields. Once you have chosen your desired colour, click “OK” to apply it to your selected object. or
- By selecting the colour icons in the toolbar. Double-clicking them to open from the colour picker window. You can either select a colour from the colour spectrum or enter a specific colour value in the RGB or HSB fields. Once you have chosen your desired colour, click “OK” to apply it to your selected object. or
- By using the swatches flyout menu (which you can access by going to the Window tab > Color > Swatches). In the Swatches panel, scroll through the available swatches until you find the colour you want to use. Click on the swatch to apply the colour to your selected object. That’s it! The colour from the swatch you selected should now be applied to your object. If you don’t see the colour you want in the swatches panel, you can create a new swatch by clicking on the “New Swatch” icon at the bottom of the panel and selecting your desired colour.
- By using the colour panel menu (which you can access by going to Window tab > Color > Color). In the Color panel, you will see several colour modes to choose from, such as CMYK, RGB, LAB, and more. Choose the colour mode that you want to work with by clicking on its tab at the top of the panel. To pick a colour, click and drag the cursor around in the large colour field to choose the hue and saturation, then adjust the brightness and opacity by moving the sliders below. Once you have chosen your desired colour, click on the “OK” button to apply it to your selected object. That’s it! Your object should now be filled or outlined in the colour you selected from the colour panel.
- You can add a gradient fill or stroke by selecting the object and then double-clicking on the Gradient icon in the toolbar or go to the Window tab > Color > Gradient). In the Gradient panel, you can choose from several types of gradients, such as linear or radial. Choose the type of gradient you want to use, then click on one of the colours stops in the gradient slider to select it. Click on the colour swatch in the colour stop to open the colour picker. Use the colour picker to select the colour you want for that stop in the gradient. Once you have chosen your colour, click “OK” to apply it to the selected stop. You can repeat this process for each colour stop in the gradient slider to create the desired colour blend. You can also adjust the position and opacity of each colour stop to fine-tune your gradient. That’s it! Your object should now have a gradient applied to it, with the colours you selected in the Gradient panel. From there, you can choose a preset gradient or create your custom gradient.
- After applying colours to the objects, you can adjust the transparency of a fill or stroke by using the transparency control in the control panel or the Effects panel. This allows you to create semi-transparent or translucent effects.
In the process of adding colour to text, it is crucial to exercise care when altering the fill colour of the text. This requires selecting the text specifically with the text tool, as opposed to the text box. Failure to adhere to this may result in the coloration of the text box instead. In the event of an unintended colour fill, one may utilize the ‘Undo’ command by pressing Command Z on a Mac or Control Z on a PC. To highlight the desired portion of text, one may double-click on a specific word, triple-click to select the entire sentence or utilize the text tool to manually select the intended words.
To change the stroke colour, make sure the stroke thumbnail is active and select your colour. You can customize the weight and style of the stroke in the toolbar or the stroke flyout menu (which you can access by going to the Window tab > scroll down to Stroke).
And if you want to switch it up, such as your stroke and fill colours, just click the curved arrow icon in the swatches panel or double-
in the toolbar. Easy, right?
Okay, so if you’re trying to make your lines thicker or thinner in your design, here’s what you gotta do: First, click on the thing you want to change. Once you find it, you’ll see that you can change the stroke thickness in two different spots. You can either mess around with the stroke weight and style at the top of the control panel, or you can check out the stroke flyout menu for even more options. If you can’t find the panel, just go to the ‘Window’ tab and click on ‘Stroke.’ With these options, you can customize your lines and strokes however you want, whether it’s a straight line, shape, or text.