How to Make a New Illustrator Template with Custom Swatches

1. Make your document with your preferred swatches. Save it to your desktop and close it.
2. Move it to: Applications > Adobe Illustrator 2025 > Cool Extras > en_US > Templates > Blank Templates
3. When you need a document with those swatches, go to File > New from Template and choose that template.
4. If you need other elements, like symbols or graphic styles, you can also add those to your template.

 

How to add a Dockable Swatch Library to Illustrator

1. Make your template with the swatches required for your needs.
2. Save that File to Your desktop. Mine is named Mimaki Cut Swatches.
3. Move that file here: /Applications/Adobe Illustrator 2025/Presets.localized/en_US/Swatches
4. To load that swatch library in Illustrator, go to: Window > Swatch Libraries > Mimaki Cut Swatches,

Stockinette Stitch Knitting Fonts

In my career, my time is spent at the intersection of two industries, of multiple programs, and generally wherever two typically unrelated topics converge. Those areas are often of the greatest interest to me, because they remain largely unexplored. Come with me friends, as I take you on a tour of a bit of that dual existence in my life: at the intersection of multiples worlds, where knitting, font design, and graphic design software merge.

It's important to understand the reasoning behind the necessity of creating this knitting font. Upon searching for Knitting fonts online, you'll come upon a mish mash collection of cross stitch letters, letters made to look like string, and stitches that don't line up... the list of inaccurate knitted alphabets goes on and on. As a knitter, I think it's important that if you're going to design a "knitting font" that you get the details right. Most of the knitted fonts that exist don't get the details correct, and obviously made by non-knitters.

Here are some of the issues I've encountered:

1. The alphabet is actually not a font, but a vector stock art alphabet.

2. The stitches aren't curved like actual knitted stitches are. They're made of straight lines.

3. The letters are regular letter shapes, used as a clipping path for a raster image.

4. The stitches don't line up. The left and right hand side of the stitches should be on the same vertical plane. While the technique below adds visual interest, it is not representative of the true shape of knitted stitches. Plus, the stitches look like little grains of rice. This example, however, does an excellent job of incorporating both sides of the stitch into the design of the letterforms (and not chopping off one half where it is deemed unsightly).

5. The right and left side of each stitch are joined. Knitted stitches are not little hearts. Knitted stitches are actually horseshoe shaped, and mirror each other on around a vertical axis, with a little bit of space in between each half of the stitch.

5. No background stitches. When knitting letters in a design in a physical piece of knitting, they are integrated into the fabric itself, they don't float magically in the air. Hence, the need for background stitches. The background stitches are just as much part of the design as the letters themselves. While it's true that the letterforms can be used without the background stitches (as in the example below), for maximum usability, as well as accuracy in representation to a physically knitted fabric, there should be background stitches available, either as alternate characters, or as a second member of the font family.

6. Spaces not handled properly. When uses spaces in a knitted design, there are background stitches in the fabric. This font gets a some of the other technical details correct, but it makes no account for the spaces between the words. 

Knitfont

Once spaces are added, things break down. The background stitches are gone. We can work around this using some special characters and GREP Styles in InDesign, but in this particular font, the character sets don't match, and the necessary glyphs weren't made to allow the background stitches to be used. 

7. Stitches chopped off. Here in another font that makes a fair attempt at knitted stitches. Like the font above, it has no background stitches. 

Xmas Sweater Stitch

If you look closely, it's clear that the details are wrong. In the corners, the side half of the some of the stitches are chopped off. While that does make the diagonals look a little smoother, it's not technically accurate. This was obviously not designed by a knitter.

8. Incomplete character set. This is the closest one that I found to an actual knitting font. The shapes of the stitches are correct, the stitches line up, the style of the letterforms is accurate for what knitters use; it's pretty great. It's even in a style common to what a knitter would actually use when knitting names into a garment. The issues that I encountered are that it doesn't have a full character set, and there are no background stitches built into the font itself. So when using this for graphic design it must be used in conjunction with the vector background that is packaged with the font. 

Christmas Font

So why make a my own custom knitting fonts?

While I can manually create these fair isle letters in Illustrator each time I need them, it's a tedious process to do just every once in awhile. I wanted an alphabet that I can quickly use whenever I need to plan some knitted lettering. For example, I've been making family Christmas stockings for over a decade. I've lost track of how many I've made. It would be really great to just type up my name chart quickly each time I go to start a stocking, rather than get out graph paper and draw it.

By incorporating advanced typographic features like ligatures, I can have more flexibility when working with a set number of stitches. Take these stocking for example. Each name needs to fit within 28 stitches. That's why in the BAILEY and the ASHLYN stockings, the Ys are different. Bailey's name is 6 letters long. Ashlyn's name is 7 letters long and required the stitches to have tighter tracking. The Y is very closely aligned to the L in front of it. Having ligatures and alternate characters in the font allows this to happen either automatically or manually.

Kelly's Christmas Stockings

Plus, if I have these alphabets as actual fonts, I can quickly and easily typeset knitting letter charts for other knitters on my Etsy shop. I can also use these fonts to personalize my KnitSwag products.

I wanted my knitting fonts to meet the following criteria:

• Accurate curves (to reflect the way the yarn forms each stitch)
• Stitches aligned to a grid (not offset in any way)
• Proper gauge (not too horizontally or vertically compressed). They should be about a .67 height to width ratio.
• Incorporate the use of ligatures so that character placement can be adjusted to fit a set number of stitches
• Available in different number of stitches high, in order to be used for different types of projects
• Available in both Regular and Bold versions
• Uses a second font with each font family, for background stitches
• Has a complete character set, including punctuation, numbers, and most special characters

How I made the fonts

I used Adobe InDesign and IndyFont Pro to create my custom knitting fonts. IndyFont Pro is a dream come true! It lets me use the software that I know and love to create fonts. The free version lets you create a single character (for bullets), but the Pro version lets you create full character sets. It's well documented, and the user manual is one of the best I've ever seen!

So far I've created two versions of stockinette stitch fair isle knitting fonts: an 8 stitch high and an 11 stitch high version. They are the only knitting fonts of their kind! I'll be designing more in the coming weeks. Would you like to have a custom name chart in these fonts? Head on over to my Etsy shop and I'll set you set up! I made these fair isle alphabets with specifically with knitters in mind.

A More Accurate Knitting Graph Paper

I am a lifelong knitter. I am also an avid user of Adobe Illustrator. Occasionally, my two loves collide and the result is something useful and unusual. This tool is one of those results.

In my knitting life, I sometimes do a type of knitting called Fair Isle. In popular culture, this is associated with Ugly Christmas sweaters. But in the knitting world, this has been a sophisticated and much loved technique that has existed for centuries before. Do a quick search for stranded color work knitting or fair isle knitting and you'll find hundred of beautiful designs.

The essence of Fair Isle is that it follows a color chart to indicate which color of yarn to use on which stitches. Usually, two strands of yarn are used on each row, and the unused strand of yarn is held at the back of the work. Usually, the color charts for this type of knitting are created in a spreadsheet program.

As a knitter, the issue that I've run into is that knitting stitches are not square. It's simple enough to make the spreadsheet cells roughly proportional to the dimensions of a knitted stitch (roughly 1 wide by .75 high). But once those designs are knitted, the result can be disappointing, because not only are knitted stitches not square, they're not rectangular either. They are horseshoe shaped. Many times, illustrators will draw them as Vs because that's the part of the stitch that is visible from the front of the work. This is especially apparent when using fair isle to design letterforms. Shapes that would normally have lovely curves and smooth diagonals, can have jagged edges.

You may notice that the Vs in the knitted piece below are actually upside-down; this is because this stocking was knit from the top-down, so the knitting is actually upside down while being knitted.

Traditional graph-paper style charts cannot account for this end result. So help knitters better visualize how their final designs will look when knitted, I designed an accurate fair isle chart, made not of rectangles, but of actual knitted stitches. 

This is a BLANK fair isle knitting chart (available in both landscape and portrait).  This chart comes with two versions: one has gridlines and the other does not. On the gridded version, every fifth row and column is a darker shaded outline.

It works for both top-down as well as bottom-up knitting. If you are a knitter and want a better type of knitting graph paper, then this is for you! 

If you are a knitter, please visit my KnitSwag Etsy shop and see all the other lovely knitterly items I have for sale. I have designed them with you in mind!

Things I Love About Bluebeam Revu: Part 2

There are so many things I love about Bluebeam Revu that it is impossible to fit them all in one article. So I am dedicating an entire series to it. Read Part 1 of the series here.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Customizable Keyboard shortcuts

In Revu 2.0 for Mac, users have the ability to set their own keyboard shortcuts! I've seen a fair number of keyboard shortcuts interfaces in my years in publishing, and I have to say that this is the best one I have seen. It clearly divides the shortcuts into two categories: Tools and Commands. It also has the ability to let users search for a specific command. 

Keyboard Shortcuts: Tools

Keyboard Shortcuts: Commands

Now, the terms may be slightly different than what I'm accustomed to, but that's no problem. For example, what I know as the "Hand" tool is actually called "Pan" here in Revu; and it's located under the Commands tab.

The list of shortcuts automatically filters itself so that only functions which contain the search term are listed. This is very similar to how the Illustrator keyboard shortcuts work.

Users can search for shortcuts!

User Interface

I'm a huge fan of the UI in Revu. It puts a priority on efficiency and ease of use. I can tell that the people who designed and built Revu actually use it. 

• Graphical Icons are built right into the dropdown menus, and the shortcuts for each function are displayed in the dropdown as well.

Revu for Mac 1.0: Document > Pages

Revu for Mac 1.0: Measure

The graphical icons became a bit more streamlined in Revu 2.0 for Mac, but I really like the fact that they still have colors associated with them. The menus were also slightly redesigned in Revu 2.0 for Mac (relocating some of the menu items), but the tools are still very easy to locate. 

Revu for Mac 2.0: Tools > Measure

All of the markup tools are available in the menus.

Revu for Mac 2.0: Tools > Markup

Something noteworthy about the location of the text markup tools is that they not located with the drawing tools. If you are familiar with Acrobat, you're probably used to the Sticky Note and the Highlighter tool having top bidding, base on their prominence in the menu bar. However, with Revu, the most prominent markup tools are actually the drawing tools. It took me a bit to locate the text annotation tools, but I found them in a submenu: Tools > Markup > PDF Content. I think that's an important distinction because, to me, it clearly separates out the intention of those tools. They are to markup existing PDF text content.

I also really appreciate how all the drawing markup tools are also permanently located as icons in the far right side of the program. And the program has very Fast UI, no waiting for any panels to load, ever!

The drawing markup and commenting tools are always available for easy access!

There are so many things I love about Bluebeam Revu that I will be doing a series of article explaining how awesome its features are. Please subscribe and join in learning this amazing program with me!

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Introducing my Favorite Features of Bluebeam Revu PDF Editing and Markup Software

After using the same PDF editing software for many years, I recently discovered a new one, tailored specifically to meet the needs of people in the AEC fields (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction). I downloaded a 30 day free trial and purchased it right after my trial ended. 

This new software is called Bluebeam Revu. It is cross platform, although the PC version is a bit more full-featured than the mac version, from what I have been told. But the mac version is still mind blowing. I can't even imagine what more can be added! The PC version is $349 and the Mac version is $199, and it is worth every penny! Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this software is amazing. According to Bluebeam, they have over one million users worldwide.

The work I do on my engineering-related PDFs involves mostly commenting and markup. With that in mind, I wanted to share with other folks some of my favorite markup features of Revu. Buckle your seatbelt! This is fantastic!

Note: These are screenshots from Revu Mac version 1. A week after I wrote this article, version 2 was released! Soon I will update this article with a link to my experience using version.

• There are only one set of colors to choose from, and they closely resemble those in Acrobat 9.

Color Options

• No Fill Option for drawing markups. Can I get an AMEN on that one?!

• Toolchest lets you save regularly used tools so you don't have to recreate the settings every time. You can also export your Tools to share with others. This is also a great way to store drawing markups and text boxes or things that you regularly need to use. It's like a spin on the Acrobat stamps pane or the Illustrator symbols panel. 

ToolChest has a bunch of shapes already made and waiting for you!

• Streamlined comment pop-up. Just a place to type your comment. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Drawing mode has a highlighter option. The beauty of this is that users can simply draw shapes around whatever they want to highlight! This affects the blending mode of the shapes and makes the shape tools act just like a highlighter. No more scribbling over large areas to attempt to highlight them.

• The highlighter tool is smart enough to be able to highlight vector objects that are not fonts, without me having to rasterize the document. 
• Module based UI whereby I can put whichever modules wherever I choose in the left, right, and bottom panes. The UI is truly customizable!

Module based UI

• The comment/markup pane harkens back to Acrobat 9, where it was docked at the bottom and had no wasted space. This is a great use of space!





Handy Dandy Markup Toolbar



• The Markups pane is also fully customizable, so I can choose which columns I want displayed, as well as in what order they display.

Customizable Markup Pane

• Stacking order options for comments!

• The opacity of Drawing markup Fills and borders can be adjusted independently

• Collapsible Categories in the Panes. Hide what you don't need!
• XY coordinates for all comments, right in the Properties Pane

Collapsible categories! XY Coordinates! Oh my!

I'm sure once I get more familiar with this software, my list of favorite features will grow. Give it a try and see how you like it!

Read the next article in this Bluebeam series here.

Understanding the Interchangeability of PDF Comments Across Adobe Programs: Part 2

In my previous article, I shared a bit how Notes transfer between Acrobat and Photoshop. When a document in Photoshop is saved as PDF, notes created in Photoshop actually appear in Acrobat. The comment author name in from Acrobat gets populated into the author name in the Photoshop Notes panel.

Interestingly, Photoshop only imports PDF sticky notes, not text correction markups or drawing annotations. Acrobat does provide a somewhat helpful warning. "The PDF document contains annotation types that are not supported by Photoshop. These annotations will be ignored."

That message isn't completely clear in what it will do to your Acrobat PDF annotations. Photoshop will only display Sticky Notes; nothing else. Those are the only type of annotation that is interchangeable between Photoshop and Acrobat. The message would be more accurate if it said "deleted" instead of "ignored."

Let's explore the difference of Acrobat notes and Photoshop Notes, and see who one is better suited for which purpose.  This is a photograph that requires me to use the Notes in both programs. This electrical panel has about 100 breaker labels, and I need to be able to easily find each one of them.

Here are my requirements for labeling all these breakers. 

1. So I need to label the breakers in a way that I can run a Find on them when I need to (because Acrobat can't successfully run OCR on this image).
2. I need to be able to have the labels small, so they don't take up too much space and obscure my screen while I am labeling them.
3. I need the labels color-coded.

Both Acrobat and Photoshop will allow me to do item #1 (label the breakers), but only Acrobat will allow me to run a Find on the labels.

Acrobat: Search Comments

Photoshop can handle #2: labeling while keeping the labels small. It is a much better solution than Acrobat. See how large this comment is in Acrobat? It takes up way to much space! If you click on a comment in Acrobat, the giant pop-up note covers the page.

Comments in Acrobat obscure the image.

Acrobat does have a preference that will align the sticky notes to the edge of the document, but it only works well if you have the comments pane closed.

The width of neither the Comments pane nor the sticky note pop-ups are changeable, so if you have both open, they take up a huge amount of screen real estate.

Acrobat Comment aligned to the edge of the page, with Commenting Pane open

When viewing document, Acrobat centers your document in the window, giving you no ability to drag it over to the left a bit to free up some space on the right for the comments. See all that wasted gray space on the left?

All the gray space is wasted! 

Contrast this with Photoshop. When I click on a note, it doesn't automatically pop-up. The content simply displays in the Notes panel. Plus, I can drag the image over and fully utilize the entire window. The note icon is so small and elegant! Can you even find it in the image below? It doesn't obscure the image, and it's contents are displayed unobtrusively in the Notes pane, which I can either dock or drag wherever I want.

So Photoshop is definitely where I want to do my labeling.

Acrobat can handle item #3: color-coding. This is a very important part of my workflow, and I have written about it extensively. At first glance, Photoshop has no options for Notes. All you can do is navigate through the notes, delete them, or close the panel.

Photoshop Notes Panel

 Compare that with the Photoshop Character Panel, which is rich with options, including the ability to change the color.

Photoshop Character Panel

For real customization of my notes, I have historically used Acrobat, because the user interface exists and is easy to find.

We've already discovered that Notes made on a Photoshop PDF in Acrobat. But one day, I happened to open in Photoshop a Photoshop PDF that I had color-coded in Acrobat. And guess what happened?!

Colored Notes in Photoshop!

The notes were colored! It turns out that Photoshop has the ability to display different colors of notes! After using Photoshop notes for years, I recently discovered that when the Note tool is selected, the control bar displays two options: Author (which is blank by default), and Color. It is these two attributes that are interchangeable with Acrobat. 

Notes options in the Photoshop Control Bar

The default behavior for attributes is different program to program. For example:

• InDesign: The default attributes of new objects are set when nothing is selected.
• Illustrator: The default attributes of new objects are picked up from the last object that you had selected.
• Acrobat: the default properties of new annotations are set when you choose "Make Properties Default."

In Photoshop, the default properties of new notes are more like Illustrator: they are picked up by whatever note you most recently had selected. Of course, you can also simply change the color in the Control bar. However, it's important to note that if you want to utilize Acrobat's Sort Comments By Color feature, the colors you choose need to match exactly. So rather than assigning all the Note colors using the Color Picker eyedropper, I prefer to simply either copy and paste the notes, and then change their content, or click on a note that is the color that I want, and then make a new note set to that color.

How to Sort and Search Notes

Once you've got your notes in Photoshop, it's time to head back over to Acrobat. But first, let's take a final look altho completely notated Photoshop document.

Photoshop PDF with Colored Notes

Save your file as a Photoshop PDF, being sure to check the Notes checkbox.

Now open that file in Acrobat. The notes are color-coded and full searchable! Now I have all the functional that I need for my notes, but I didn't have to endure the overbearing and inflexible user interface of Acrobat commenting to create this.

Colored and Searchable Notes in Acrobat