The default swatches are a generic set of colors, but the true value of the Swatches palette is in its ability to load custom swatch collections. With a set of custom color swatches you can restrict yourself to specific colors without having to remember any numeric color values. For instance, you can create a custom swatch from the colors in a company logo, and use those colors when working on other projects for the company.
Here's a few color swatch actions you can try on your own:
- Left click selects a foreground color
- Ctrl-click (Command-click on Mac) selects the background color.
- Alt-click (Option-click on Mac) deletes the color swatch. The cursor changes to a scissors icon to indicate this.
- When you move your cursor over an empty spot in the swatch palette, it changes to a paint bucket and you can click to add a new color to the swatches palette.You'll be prompted to type a name for the swatch.
- The two buttons at the bottom of the swatches palette allow you to create and delete colors.
- Double click on a color to rename it.
- You can revert to the default swatch palette by choosing Reset Swatches from the Swatches palette menu.
- You can also load, replace, and save swatch collections from the Swatches palette menu.
- You can change the appearance of how the swatch palette displays color swatches by choosing the small thummnails, large thumbnails, small list, or large list options from the palette menu.
- At the bottom of the swatches palette is a list of all the swatch palettes that come pre-installed with Photoshop.
- You can access the preset manager from the swatches palette menu. The preset manager gives you another way to work with swatches and other Photoshop presets.