Color structure for soft gluon resummation - a general recipe

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 (q) over bar -> q (q) over barg and q (q) over bar -> ggg.