Working with ChromaSpot

Getting the library into Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign takes about two minutes. The only real decision is which of the two Adobe formats you want, and it depends on whether this is a palette for one job or a library you keep.

Which format

The Download dialog: file format, subset, range, measurement condition, include spectral data — The Download dialog in the Library Browser: format, subset, range, M condition, and whether the spectra travel with the file.

	ASE	ACB
Installs	No — loads into a document	Yes — into the application
Appears	In the Swatches panel of that document	In the Swatches panel dropdown, beside the libraries Adobe ships
Precision	Lab as 32-bit float — exact	Lab in three bytes — rounded to one of 256 steps per channel
Right for	A palette of a few dozen, on one project	The whole library, permanently

Do not load four thousand swatches into a document. It works and nobody enjoys it. Use ACB for the library and ASE for the handful you are actually working with.

Loading an ASE

Swatches panel → menu → Load Swatches, and pick the file. That is all. The swatches live with the document, so they travel with it and have to be loaded again in the next one.

Installing an ACB

Copy the file into the application’s Color Books folder and restart it. The exact location moves between Adobe versions and between macOS and Windows — the reliable way to find it is to look for the folder that already contains the colour books your installation shipped with, and put the file beside them.

After a restart, the library appears in the Swatches panel dropdown by name.

Build the palette first

The most useful thing you can hand a client or a printer is not the library. It is twelve colours.

Collect them in the browser with the plus button, then choose Scratchpad as the subset in the download dialog. The file carries only what you chose, and its name says which subset, which measurement condition and which Range filter produced it.

What the Adobe formats lose

Both ACB and ASE carry Lab values and nothing else. The spectrum does not survive, which means the receiving application cannot recompute the colour for a different light or a different observer — it has the answer for D50 and the 2° observer and no way back to the question.

For design work that is usually fine. For anything a supplier will make — an ink to mix, a dye to match, a profile to build — send CxF instead. It is the same colour with its spectrum intact, and formulation software reads it directly.

The rule that matters in a design file. Keep the code with the name. A swatch called 8R4.52 Pyrrole Scarlet survives a name being withdrawn; one called Pyrrole Scarlet does not, and the file has no way to say which colour it meant.

Illuminant and observer travel badly

The Lab values written into an ACB or ASE are the ones you were viewing under. If you moved the browser away from D50 and 2°, the file carries those numbers and the receiving application has no idea. Either export at the default, or say plainly what the file is when you send it.

Other software. CorelDRAW, Affinity and most RIPs read ASE. Colour-management and formulation systems read CxF and CGATS. All four come out of the same download dialog — see File Formats.