| Adobe Photoshop Basics | |
You can imagine how time consuming it would be if you had to create a custom swatch collection by choosing and adding colors one at a time. You'll be glad to know that you can create a custom palette from the colors in an existing image. (Continued Below)
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Let's try it now using the About logo. Save this image to your hard drive and open it in Photoshop.
The image opens in RGB color mode. In order to create a swatch collection from an image, we must first convert it to a indexed palette image. To do this, go to the Image menu and choose Mode > Indexed Color.
The indexed color dialog box appears. You can read more about the options in the dialog in the online help, but for this exercise, just make the following selections:
• Palette: Perceptual
• Colors: 128
• Forced: None
• Transparency: unchecked
• Dither: None
Click OK, and the image is converted to indexed color mode, and the color palette of the image is displayed in the swatches palette (version 5.x only).
To save the swatches for future use, go to Image > Mode > Color Table > Save. Give the file a name and then cancel out of the color table dialog. Color Tables are saved as ACT files. You can store the files anywhere and load them from the Swatch Palette menu. When loading a color swatch the default file name is set to ACO, so in order to load the ACT file you'll need to change the Files of type menu to look for ACT files. Once the Color table is loaded into the swatches palette you can save it again as an ACO file for ease of use; this step is not necessary, however, since the swatches palette can load both ACO and ACT files.
You'll find some additional color swatch files in the Goodies folder in your Photoshop application folder.
| Notes for Version 6.0 |
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In Photoshop 6, you'll find some additional options on the Swatches Palette menu. Most noticeably you'll find that you can load swatches directly from the menu. As long as the ACO swatch file is located in your Adobe\Photoshop 6.0\Presets\Color Swatches folder, the swatches will be listed on the menu, saving you a few steps when loading custom swatches. If you add a new swatch file while Photoshop is running, you'll need to close and reopen Photoshop before they will appear in the menu.
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Another difference in Photoshop 6 is that you have the option to view swatches as thumbnails or as a list. The list view shows a larger color swatch with the color name next to it. In thumbnail view, you can still see the color names by holding the cursor over the swatch for a few moments.
Also in Photoshop 6, you'll find there are two icons along the bottom of the swatch palette for creating new swatches and deleting swatches. You can drag swatches from the palette to these buttons to add and remove colors from the swatch collection.Next > Eyedropper & Info Palette
