How to Delete Unused Colors in Illustrator

Tidy up your Illustrator Swatches panel to avoid cluttering it with unused experiments.

Every time you click on a swatch in an Adobe Illustrator color library, or add a color directly to your Swatches panel, that color persists in your document's resources whether or not you apply it to any graphics, text, gradients or gradient meshes, patterns or effects. When you placed or imported artwork from Illustrator's early versions into page layouts, these colors added themselves to the color palettes of your DTP software. Today's incarnation of Adobe Illustrator doesn't place a burden on other applications that use its output. Nonetheless, professionals purge unused colors to keep their Illustrator file sizes in check.

Instructions

1. Open the Swatches panel if it isn't already visible. Click on the Window menu and choose "Swatches."

2. Click on the "Show Swatch Kinds Menu" icon at the bottom of the Swatches panel. Set the panel display to "Show All Swatches" so you'll see colors, gradients, patterns and color groups.

3. Open the fly-out menu at the top-right corner of the Swatches panel. Click on the "Select All Unused" option to activate all swatches that you haven't applied to any of the graphics and type in your document.

4. Examine the swatches in your Swatches panel. Selected items show a white border around their edges, indicating that the "Select All Unused" option targeted them.

5. Click on the "Delete Swatch" icon at the far-right edge of the bottom of the Swatches panel. Adobe Illustrator displays a dialog box asking you to confirm that you want to delete the selected swatches. Click on the "OK" button to remove them.

Tips & Warnings

• Hold down the "Alt" key (Windows) or "Option" key (Mac) while you click on the "Delete Swatch" icon in the Swatches panel to remove selected swatches without the confirmation dialog box.

• Always deselect any active artwork before you click on resources displayed in the Swatches panel to avoid accidentally applying any of them to your document.

• You can't delete a color swatch that's used in a pattern or gradient unless you delete the pattern or gradient first. If your first pass through the swatch-deletion process leaves behind resources you expected it to delete, repeat the process.

• If you can't delete a swatch despite clearing out patterns, gradients and other resources, check for locked or hidden artwork or layers that may contain instances of the swatches you can't delete.

References

• Adobe Systems: Using Adobe Illustrator CS5

Resources

• The Adobe Illustrator CS5 Wow! Book: Sharon Steuer
• Real World Adobe Illustrator CS5: Mordy Golding
• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies: Jennifer Smith, et al.
• Adobe Illustrator CS5 Bible: Ted Alspach
• Illustrator CS5 for Windows and Macintosh Visual QuickStart Guide: Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas