Reusing Your Brushes, Swatches, and Libraries

Reusing Your Brushes, Swatches, and Libraries

Has this ever happened to you? You go through the trouble to create custom brushes, beautiful colors, and outstanding appearances, save them in the Styles palette, and later discover that they’re all specific to the document that you created them in. Rats! To prevent that from happening to you again, you can open the swatches, brushes, and styles that you created in one document in any other document.

For example, to get the brushes from another document, choose Window→ Brush Libraries→Other Library. An Open dialog box appears. Choose the document with the brushes that you want to add to the current document, as if you were going to open it. Click Open. Instead of opening that document, Illustrator opens the custom brushes in their own palette, ready for you to use. Follow the same steps, choosing Window→Swatch Libraries→Other Library or Window→Style Libraries→Other Library to add your swatches or styles.