After learning a bit about Illustrator recently, I looked to see if Inkscape had a Swatches dialog. It does! And I'd never noticed it before. Great. But the reason I want to use it is to have a palette of colors I've used recently Colors I modified explicitly in the Fill and Stroke Dialog. But Inkscape swatches seem to be static. Am I missing something?

Hi!

I had the same question a week ago. Is it possible to modify swatches in order to add or remove colors?
The answer is yes, it is possible, but not as straight forward as you may think.

If you want to create your own palette you need to create or edit a .gpl file, which is a GIMP format to save palettes.
They are stored in C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\palettes (Windows).

My research finished at that point. I preferred to save me the hassle and live without a custom palette. Maybe in the future I will really need to create one, but hopefully, there will be an easiest way to do it by then. It's not that now it's very complicated, it's that could be easier

Hope it helped.

Cheers

Thanks. Yes, I saw that in the documentation, but it's not at all what I'm looking for. If I figure out a color, I want to be able to use that on other objects in my drawing quickly. More quickly than with the dropper. And ideally, I want to tie a few objects together so that if I change the color of one, they all change. Oh, that would be SO helpful.

I want to be able to use that on other objects in my drawing quickly. More quickly than with the dropper

It is possible to copy and paste styles (color, gradient, stroke, etc..):

1- Select a object
2- Ctrl + C
3- Select the object (or objects) which you want to have the same style as the previous object
4- Shif + Ctrl + V (or Edit > Paste Style)

And ideally, I want to tie a few objects together so that if I change the color of one, they all change.

Clones do that:

1- Create and object
2- Select it
3- Alt + D ( or Edit > Clone > Create a clone)
4- When you change the color on the parent object, the child object will change too.

If you want to change the color of all the clones, just select the parent object and change its color. Actually you try to change the color of any of the childs you will see that you are not allowed. Read the at the bottom "Clone of ellipse in Layer 1. Use Shift + D to look up original"

But I don't think this is what you are looking for as clones also synchronize shapes, so it is not very useful if you are working with objects with different sahapes.

Hope you find paste styles useful, although it's not perfect

Swatches are finally usable in the development version, it will be out soon (0.48).

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... m_Swatches

When you edit a swatch all the objects with it applied will change accordingly, a new way of sharing colors between object besides clones

prkos wrote:Swatches are finally usable in the development version, it will be out soon (0.48).

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... m_Swatches

When you edit a swatch all the objects with it applied will change accordingly, a new way of sharing colors between object besides clones

This sounds better. To clarify further, I do not want to use clones on these objects. I want to track recently used colors, and have access to them quickly, and even better, set a number of object (not clones) to stay the same color as each other so if I change the color of one, the others change too. Sort of a "color-only" clone. This would be an immense time saver in many projects.

Ok. Let's see if the following solution suits you.

1- Create several objects
2- Select all
3- Ctrl + G to group them

Now every time you want to change the color of all at the same time, just click on one of the object and pick a color.
I know what are you thinking. Using this method you cannot edit or move them individually... Wait. Here come the trick!

4- Ctrl + Click in the object you want to move or edit. This will select the object inside the group and you can edit it separately!

Easy enough?
Click in one to select all the objects; Ctrl + Click to select individually.

About the customized swatches, meanwhile the version 0.48 arrives, the only solution I can think of is to create a series of little rectangles at a side of the drawing filled with your favorite color. You can fill a object using the Dropper tool (F7) and clicking on it.

Hope it helps

Cheers!