Creating CMYK Swatches for a Swatch Book using Illustrator

Question

So I have a swatch book like the attached image. Each page all the CMK values are the same but only the yellow changes. Right now each page the Yellow changes by 10% (0,10,20,30 etc). Is there a script that could take the existing art (or create a new one) that would change the yellow only on each square to a desired amount? or even if i had a 100 page file where it increases by 1% each page.

Thanks in advance!

Example of CMYK Swatch

aside from selecting each object, not sure what else to do.

Answer 1

You can try to modify this script:

var doc = app.activeDocument;

var mm = 2.83465;

var start_left = 20*mm;
var start_top = 20*mm;
var gap = 0.2*mm;
var size_3x3_boxes = 5*mm;

var start_color = new CMYKColor();
start_color.c = 0;
start_color.m = 0;
start_color.y = 0;
start_color.k = 0;

var color = start_color;

for (var i=0; i<21; i++) {
    draw_11x11_grid(start_top, start_left, size_3x3_boxes, gap, color)
    start_top += 60*mm;
    color.cyan = 0;
    color.magenta = 0;
    try {color.yellow += 5} catch(e) {} // <-- HERE THE YELLOW IS CHANGING
}

function draw_11x11_grid(start_top, start_left, size, gap, color) {
    var top = start_top;
    for (var j=0; j<11; j++) {
        var left = start_left;
        for (var i=0; i<11; i++) {
            draw_3x3_boxes(top, left, size, gap, color);
            try {color.magenta += 10} catch(e) {}
            left += (size+gap*2);
        }
        left = start_left;
        top += (size+gap*2);
        color.magenta = 0;
        try {color.cyan += 10} catch(e) {}
    }
}

function draw_3x3_boxes(y, x, size, gap, color) {
    var w = (size - gap*2)/3;
    var h = (size - gap*2)/3;
    color.black = 0;
    var box = draw_box(y, x, w, h, color);
    add_two_boxes(box, gap);
    color.black = 30;
    var box = draw_box(y + box.height + gap, x, w, h, color);
    add_two_boxes(box, gap);
    color.black = 60;
    var box = draw_box(y + (box.height + gap)*2, x, w, h, color);
    add_two_boxes(box, gap);
}

function add_two_boxes(box, gap) {
    var box1 = box.duplicate();
    box1.left += box.width + gap;
    box1.fillColor.black += 10;
    var box2 = box1.duplicate();
    box2.left += box.width + gap;
    box2.fillColor.black += 10;
}

function draw_box(y, x, w, h, color) {
    var box = doc.pathItems.rectangle(-y, x, w, h);
    box.stroked = false;
    box.filled = true;
    box.fillColor = color;
    return box;
}

It gets you this:

If you want just to change the yellow channel of selected objects it can be done this way:

var sel = app.selection;
for (var i=0; i<sel.length; i++) {
    try { sel[i].fillColor.yellow += 5 } catch(e) {}
}

It increases by 5% the yellow channel of selected objects.

---

I changed the first code to make it to create 20 tables with 5% steps of yellow color.