  A strategy for calculating the color structure needed for soft gluon
resummation for processes with any number of colored partons is introduced
using a N_c --> infinity inspired basis. In this basis a general formalism can
be found at the same time as the calculations are simplified.
  The advantages are illustrated by recalculating the soft anomalous dimension
matrix for the processes gg --> gg, q\qbar --> q \qbar g and q\qbar --> ggg.
