Hue Chart Creator

Colour charts that work the way you think about colour: by hue, then lighter or darker, more or less colourful. Print a set on your printer and matching a customer's sample becomes quick and logical.

See it in the shop · Version 1.1.9 · Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later

Open the PowerScripts panel (Window > Extensions > PowerScripts) and choose Hue Chart Creator from the Color Charts scripts. The script has four tabs: General, Color Codes, Layout and Steps.

1. On General, choose Color: CMYK (or RGB) and a Hue Step, for example 10° (36 Pages).
2. Leave First page only ticked and press Create Hue Chart. Check the layout.
3. Untick First page only and press Create Hue Chart again for the full set.
4. Print it with the colour settings you use for jobs.

Pantone books don't have enough colours, and CMYK grid charts aren't laid out the way your eye looks for a colour. A hue chart is:

• Easy to search: find the hue (the page), then go lighter or darker (down) and more or less colourful (across).
• Fine where it matters: smaller steps in light colours and greys, where differences are easiest to see.
• Complete: on the default settings there's usually 5 Delta E or less between neighbouring patches, wherever your printer can print the colour. Average the formulas of two neighbours for an even closer match.

RGB charts suit printers with extra inks (a bigger gamut), and the colours translate easily to Lab.

Each page is one hue (0° to 360° round the colour wheel). Down the page the lightness changes, across the page the chroma (how colourful). The rows and columns are set on the Steps tab. Every patch is worked out in LCh and turned into CMYK or RGB with Illustrator's current colour profile, and labelled with its formula.

Some colours can't be printed with your profile (“out of gamut”). You choose how they show.

• Color: CMYK or RGB patches.
• Hue Step: one page every 5° (72 pages), 10° (36 pages) or 15° (24 pages), or a Custom Range with your own Start, End and Step.
• Out of Gamut: what to do with colours your profile can't print: Hide them, show a Grey Box, Show with mark, or Show them anyway.
• Axis Labels: label the rows and columns.
• Show a*,b* values: add the Lab a* and b* values.
• First page only (Use for testing layout): make just one page to check the layout.
• Use Color Codes: label each patch with a unique colour name (see Color Codes).
• Create named spot colors: save every patch as a named spot colour in the chart.
• Create Hue Chart: makes a new document with the chart.
• Add Colors to Swatches: put the chart's colours in your Swatches panel as named colours, without making a chart. It first offers to remove the swatches your document doesn't use, for a clean list.

• Name Method: Numerical names from the hue, lightness and chroma (for example H210-60-40), or Codes from the Color Code columns on the Steps tab (for example H210-H-40).
• Color Mode: save named colours as PROCESS (CMYK/RGB) or Lab.
• Prefix and Divider: the start of each name and the character between its parts.

• Swatch Width, Swatch Height, Swatch Gutter: the patches and the gaps between them.
• Label Height, Label Offset, Font Size: the formula labels under each patch.
• Axis Space, Axis Font Size: room for the axis labels.
• Gamut Limit: how far (in Delta E) a printed colour may be from the asked-for colour before it counts as out of gamut.
• Gamut Mark Size: the size of the out-of-gamut mark.
• Page Border, Page Gutter: the margin round each page, and the gap between pages.
• Header and Footer: their height, text offset and font size.

Two lists: the Luminosity (lightness) of each row and the Chroma of each column, each with an optional Color Code for naming. Add or remove rows to make the chart finer or more compact.

1. Find the page with the closest hue, then the closest patch.
2. If it falls between two patches, average their formulas.
3. With Use Color Codes on, the patch name tells you exactly which colour to use, for example H210-H-40.

• Start with First page only to get the layout right: a full chart can be dozens of pages.
• Make named colours with Add Colors to Swatches, then use the same names in jobs: every colour matches a patch on your printed chart.
• For a chart round one starting colour, see Color Shotgun. For greys, see Neutral Chart Creator.

• Colours depend on your colour settings (Edit > Color Settings): make the chart with the settings you use for jobs.
• With Out of Gamut set to Hide or Grey Box, no spot colours are made for the colours left off.

• 1.1.9
  • New: Add Colors to Swatches puts the chart's colours in your Swatches panel as named spot or process colours, without making a chart, and first offers to remove the swatches your document does not use, for a clean swatch list.
  • Fixed: First page only makes one page, and Custom Range shows its Start, End and Step boxes again.
  • Fixed: with Out of Gamut set to Hide or Grey Box, no spot colours are made for colours left off the chart.
  • Fixed: the swatch, gap, border and axis sizes say mm, the unit they always used.
  • Improved: charts of more than 4 pages are put together without copy and paste, so your clipboard is left alone.
  • Improved: general bug fixes, reliability and speed. Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later.
• 1.1.7: Updated for PowerScripts 3.8.32.
• 1.1.6: Updated for the new version of PowerScripts.
• Older changes: PowerScripts Release Notes