Knowledge Base
Knowledge Base
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For any repeat, woven or knit file that needs an exported repeat swatch, go to the Export tab on Colorist in Illustrator once the art has been added to Colorist. Choose a file type, resolution and select the artwork on the document. Then hit the arrow button on the panel to see a destination window and complete the export.
This function will export the selected artwork on the file. To change the size of the artwork shown, use the Fill Size option on any of the Repeat, Weave or Knit tools to add or subtract to the image.
Please note, for Repeats use the Fill Size to show the correct amount of the repeat when the artwork is created using half drop or shift options. Doubling the height on a shift and doubling the width on a half drop will give the correct repeat tile when exported.
For additional information or support, please email support@AquarioDesign.com
You can create and save templates for production and presentation in RS Colorist. You will need to have your configuration file set up in order to save templates. To have this set up please¬†please reach out to¬†support@AquarioDesign.com. “To make a template in RS Colorist:n
- Launch an artwork file in RS and apply the colors. 
- Go to Window>Colorist
- Navigate through the Show, Layout, and Page tabs. Select the desired information, color chip size/orientation, and page size. Move the information, color chips, and page where you want it to be placed around the artwork. 
- Go to the Template tab. You can add text and images or logos if desired.
- Click the Floppy Disc icon at the bottom of the Template tab to save the template. 
- Your template will be added to the list of templates. Double click the template name to rename it.
- To apply a template select it from the list and click the check button.
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When working in RS and RS Colorist, palettes will populate automatically if they have been built into Palette Manager in Illustrator to provide easy access to seasonal color palettes. If you have not build palettes yet, here's how to get started. “
- To build a palette into Palette Manager, open Illustrator and go to Window>DesignPro>Design Utility>Palette Manager.
- Add the Brand, Year and Palette information to each of the top three drop downs by entering the name and hitting + after each one on Palette Manager
- Add colors into Palette Manager by selecting the color(s) in the Swatches panel, an open ASE file or eye dropping from a file and hitting + next to the Colors section. Do this until all necessary colors are added to the palette.
- Once this is finished open RS and click on the Swatches panel to the right side on the window. This should reflect the palettes made in Illustrator.
n¬† ¬† ¬† ¬† ¬† ¬†*If this does not reflect the same palettes, please contact support@AquarioDesign.com for further help”
You can use a .bak file to recover artwork when a psd file that has been run through RS has been lost, deleted or corrupted. Click on the .bak file and edit the name so that the “.bak” is removed and hit Enter. This will ask “Do you want to use .bak or .psd?”. Choose “Use .psd”. Open that file in Photoshop or directly in RS to use like the original artwork file.
The .bak can also be deleted at any time without effecting the original psd file saved from RS. The file is just a copy of the original and unneeded for sharing or editing the artwork. 
Turn off the .bak from being created by opening RS, going to the following locations and unchecking the option for “Save Backup File”
Mac: RS > DesignProRS > Preferences
PC: RS > Edit > Preferences
For additional help please contact support@AquarioDesign.com
When you have made multiple colorways in Colorist, you can select the colorways that you want to send off and present them. The presented files with be automatically exported into a new Illustrator document that can be saved as any file type or kept as an Illustrator file for other's to utilize inside of Illustrator without the DesignPro plug-ins. “
- Set up the artwork on the page as desired using your Colorist Templates or the Layout and Show tabs along with any Illustrator functions like the artboard or Alignment tools.
- Go to the Colorways tab in Colorist and select the colorways you want to send off.
- Click the 3rd button down on the right side of the colorist tool. This is the Present button. It will create a new Illustrator file called “File Name_All Colorways.ai” Each colorway will be on its own artboard and grouped together. This is the file you will share with others.
- You can always go back to the original colorist file and edit the artwork/make changes to colorways and present them again.
nFor more information please email support@AquarioDesign.com
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In RS Colorist, select all of the colorways you want to export by holding down command. Then, go to file- export. Choose the destination where you would like the swatches to go from the directory section. Next, check the box that says repeat swatches and choose the file type you would like the colorways to be exported as. You can also choose to have the colorways exported as “indexed TIFF’s”.
For additional information or support, please contact support@AquarioDesign.com
In Colorist in Illustrator and in RS, you can use the Regions tool to present a certain size of the artwork and present multiple colorways per page. To present Regions in Illustrator:
- Create Colorways in Colorist
- Set the Artboard to be the desired size
- Go to the Regions Tab
- Use the Illustrator Rectangle tool to make a rectangle on the artwork area that you want to present.
- Click Set in the Region tab
- Go to the Colorist tab and select the colorways you want to present
- Click the 4th button down on the right side of the tool.
- It will throw a pop up message asking how many colorways per page you want to export or if you want to put them all on one page. If the colorways do not fit it will ask you to change the artboard size or the region size, or adjust the amount of colorways per page. Click OK.
- It will make a new Illustrator file called “File name_All Colorways.ai” with the colorways and color chips on the page.
To present Regions in RS:
- Create Colorways in Colorist.
- Go to the Page tab and set the page size. Make sure “Show Page Border” is checked off
- Go to the Regions Tab
- Use the Rectangle tool on the left side of the RS window to make a rectangle on the artwork area that you want to present
- Click Set in the Region tab
- Go to the Colorist tab and select the colorways you want to present
- Go to File>Export
- Choose where you want to export the files to in the Directory
- Check off Colorways and Multiple per Page
- Check off Use One Page or set the amount of colorways vertically and horizontally
- Click OK at the bottom of the export panel
For more information email support@AquarioDesign.com for further assistance.
There are many reasons why different workflows could affect the success of our tools. Motifs with too many compound paths, heavy motifs with a lot of points, and motifs that were previously run in our tools all run the risk of causing messy behavior when using the Aquario Design Repeat and Colorist. Here are some recommended workflow improvements to help prevent any misbehavior within our tools:
1: Don’t add multiple repeats on one page
- If you are creating a print within a print, refrain from using our repeat tool until you are fully ready to create your repeat tile. If you put artwork or motifs into repeat using our tool to just make a larger repeated motif, and then want to take that motif and make it into a larger repeating print, you’ll have to expand the motifs by going to object – expand- and check fill and stroke. The motifs that were previously put into repeat carry hidden metadata that fights with the repeat and colorist tool’s code, causing the motifs to get deleted off the page.
2: Don’t start colorist until you are ready to recolor your final print
- If you need to recolor a motif, do so by using the direct select tool in illustrator rather than using colorist. Once a motif or print has been added to colorist it won’t like if you then go back and try to put that colorist motif into repeat. As noted before, the Colorist metadata will fight with repeat’s code and cause the motif to disappear.
For additional information or support, please email support@AquarioDesign.com
When creating vector artwork to simulate a striped repeat use the Repeat tool instead of the Weave tool. The Weave tool will force you to use a warp and weft and choose solid color positions for both, this can dilute the look of your stripe. 
Use the Repeat tool in conjunction with Ai Shape tool to create blocks of color and put them into repeat. Use Colorist for colorways and presentation. 
For Further assistance please contact support@AquarioDesign.com
In Colorist, select the templates tab and then click the + button on the top right of the panel to create a new template. Once the template is created, you can then edit the logo, font, placement, sizing, etc. to make it look how you want. Once you're happy with how the template looks, click the save button in the Colorist, template panel. Save is the third button from the top, right after the X. Once the template is saved, go back to the colorway's tab in Colorist, select the colorway or colorway's that you want to present in the template, click the templates tab, select the template you want to use, and click the check button.
For more information or support, please contact support@AquarioDesign.com
To change a color's information or properties in AI, follow the steps below.
1-Open the color in AI Swatches panel.
2-Double click on the color chip or select the color and choose Swatch Options from the menu at the top right corner.
3-When you get the Swatch Options panel open, there are a few items that can change based on what is needed. The swatch can be named, the type can be changed and the color mode can be changed as well. Make changes and hit OK to save it.
*If you have added this color to Palette Manager already, you will need to delete it out and re-add this swatch to update the information.
**If you are working with the color in RS, we recommend using RGB Mode. RS does not handle LAB colors and will change the value of a CMYK color to RGB.
If you have any additional questions, please contact support@AquarioDesign.com
- Select the new art pieces. Using the Magic Wand or the Select > Same menu in Illustrator can be handy to make sure that all pieces of the new artwork are selected.
- Go to the Colorways tab in the Colorist tool and click the Add button under the Art Section.
- For Repeat art, select all the new motifs
- For Weave art, select only the new color bars. Do not select the pattern or fill bars
- For Knit, use the Knit Selection tool and select the new stitches
- It will create new color chips next to the existing ones on the page.
- Click through each of the colorways to update them with the new artwork.
- Recolor the new art by selecting the new color chip and selecting a color from the swatches or color picker.
For additional information or support, please email support@AquarioDesign.com
Yes! To export artwork, from RS Colorist, go to file > export. Then, you have the option to export colorways including technical information and color chips as an indexed tiff OR just the repeat swatch.
For additional information or support, please email support@AquarioDesign.com
When working with Colorist in Illustrator you need to make sure that you are creating colorways in the working version of the artwork file: that is, an Illustrator file format with vector artwork. If you are working with Weave files, make sure that the weave bars (the warp and weft color, thread, and pattern bars) are visible in the document and unlocked. When you recolor a weave in Colorist, it is really recoloring the color bars and need all bars available in the document to re-generate the Weave swatch for each colorway that you create. When the colorways are presented, the Weave bars will automatically be excluded from presentation in the _All Colorways file that is created. If you are working with Repeat files, make sure that you are working with the original repeat artwork created by Aquario Design. It should not be a rasterized version of the artwork or the Repeat Swatch that is generated by the Swatch button on the repeat tool. If you are working with Knit files, make sure that you have the actual Knit stitches on the document to recolor, not just the Fill Size or a swatch of the knits. Colorist needs the Knit stitches in the file so it can recolor them properly; though that the Fill Size will be recolored as well. Individual knit swatches are just rasterized versions of the stitches, so they will not be recolored automatically. However, when you present the colorways, Colorist will include a swatch version of each knit colorway in the swatches box. If you are using the Knit Fill Size, only the Fill Size will be presented and the knit stitches will be removed in the presentation file. If you are working with regular Illustrator artwork, make sure that the artwork is in vector format and unlocked in the layer list. Some artwork and effects may need to be expanded in order for Colorist to read the artwork properly and recolor it. I f Colorways are unresponsive, copy and paste the artwork into a new Illustrator file. For additional support please email contact@aquariodesign.com for further assistance.
After picking all of your solid colors and blend groups, make sure to hit APPLY in yellow to physically apply the colors. If you choose colors and DO NOT hit apply, all editing tools including Colorist will not work.
For additional information or support, please contact support@aquariodesign.com
The Aquario Design configuration file needs to be set up in order to create and save templates and color palettes. To setup your file please email support@aquariodesign.com. If the configuration file has been set up and is on a shared or network drive, make sure that you are fully connected to the server location and can save files there. After you reconnect, close and restart Illustrator. If the network location has changed at all, please contact the team at support@aquariodesign.com to have a support specialist edit the configuration file for you.
Yes. Undo is a valid function in any Aquario Design file in Illustrator. However, It will only undo back to the step of adding a new colorway to the file. It does not have an unlimited undo stack in a Colorist file. To undo actions performed on the file, make sure to click once on the file before doing an undo to bring focus away from the Colorist tool if the last thing clicked was the Colorist panel.
For additional information or support, please email support@AquarioDesign.com
You can use the Element Details section in the Weave tool to change the length of the weave bars, but the Numeric Design Tab will be disabled after colorways have been added in Colorist. The length of the bars can be edited and the thread count can be changed. You can delete out bars and redraw them with the Add Element tool, however you cannot use the Copy to Warp/Weft button as this will break the colorways. Any new color bars should be added to the colorways by selecting the bars and clicking the Add button on the Colorways tab in Colorist. For further assistance please email contact@aquariodesign.com
This message happens when recoloring a spot color with a process color in Colorist. A spot color is a custom color including Pantones. If you respond No to this message, it will apply the process color to the color chip and preserve the color as a process color in the Illustrator Swatches. If you choose yes, it will apply the process color to the color chip and it will convert the process color into a spot color in the swatches.
For further information please contact us at support@aquariodesign.com