The Color Palette

The new Color Palette in Paint Shop Pro 7 is easily the most confusing part of the new program to people upgrading from versions 5 and 6. But, believe me, once you get used to how it works, you will see that the new Color Palette has a lot more power than the old one. Gradients, Patterns and Textures are now controlled through the Color Palette rather than through each individual tool.

First, let's take a tour of the Color Palette.

  1. Foreground/Background Colors - The color swatch on the left represents the Foreground color and the color swatch on the right represents the Background color. To set the Foreground color, left click on a color in your graphic or on the Color Picker (2).

  2. Available Colors - This portion of the Color Palette represents the totality of the colors you have set under Color Depth. The graphic on the left demonstrates 16 million colors, the middle 256 colors and the right 16 colors.

           

  3. Styles - Styles represent Solid Color, Gradient, Pattern and None. You chose the style by clicking on the right arrow symbol on the Palette, or, simply hold the left mouse button down when you are on the styles window (don't click, just hold the left mouse button down for a few seconds). This will pop out the picker as illustrated in the following graphic.

    The top Style swatch represents the Foreground color, a gradient, a pattern or none, and will become the "Stroke" (the outline) for the Text Tool and the Preset Shapes tool. The width for the stroke will be set in the individual Tool Options box. When using one of the Paint Tools, the top swatch will be active through using the left mouse button and when you use the tool, the color, pattern or gradient set will be the stroke or fill applied by the paint tool.

    The bottom Style swatch represents the Background color, a gradient, a pattern or none, and will be the "Fill" for the the Text Tool and the Preset Shapes tool. When using one of the Paint Tools, the bottom swatch will be active through using the right mouse button and when you use the tool, the color, pattern or gradient set will be the stroke or fill applied by the paint tool.

    The following graphic demonstrates a circle and text set to a black stroke of 5 with a pattern fill.

    Color - If you choose color from the pop-out picker, you can set the color by clicking on a color somewhere in the color palette. You can also pick a color from an open graphic by holding down the Ctrl key (this turns the cursor into the Eye Dropper tool) and then left-click on an image to set the Foreground color or right-click on an image to set the Background color.

    Gradient - If you choose Gradient from the pop-out picker, then click in the middle of the Style swatch, the Gradient Options box will appear.

    • To pick a gradient, click on the down arrow next to the gradient view window. This will load all the gradients in the Gradients folder.
    • To edit a gradient, click on the Edit button. For a complete tutorial on editing a gradient, click here.
    • Activate the Invert Gradient box if you wish to invert the gradient.
    • Choose the Horizontal, Vertical, Angle and Repeats for the gradient. When you set these defaults, the sample gradient will represent your choices. A Linear gradient can only have the angle and repeats set. For the remaining gradients, you can set the Horizontal and Vertical axis by either entering a number ini the boxes or by grabbing the cross-hair in the middle of the view window and dragging it.
    • Choose a style for your gradient. The styles are, from top to bottom: Linear, Rectangular, Sunburst and Radial.
    • Edit Paths - Click on this button to change the paths to your gradient folders on the fly.

    Pattern - If you choose Pattern from the pop-out picker, then click on the Styles swatch, the Pattern Options box will appear.

    • Click on the down arrow or on the sample pattern to activate the selection box.
    • Set the scale for the pattern. Most seamless tile patterns are best left set to 100%.
    • Set the angle by entering a number in the box or by dragging the dial hand with the mouse.
    • Edit Paths - Click on this button to change the paths to your pattern folders on the fly.

    The Pattern Options selections will be all the patterns in your Pattern folder and any graphics currently open on your desktop. The currently open graphics will be at the top of the select list.

    You can add your own patterns to the choices by converting pattern graphics to a .bmp and placing the converted graphic in the "Pattern" folder where you installed Paint Shop Pro.

    None - If you choose None, the Style will be deactivated.

  4. Textures - Setting a texture in the top swatch will apply the texture to the foreground color, gradient or pattern and the bottom swatch will apply the texture to the background color, gradient or pattern.

    You can add your own textures to the choices by converting a texture graphic to a .bmp and placing the converted graphic in the "textures" folder where you installed Paint Shop Pro.

  5. Lock - If you have the lock unchecked, the currently selected Styles and Textures will be saved with the tool. For example, you have a red Foreground color, a Black background color and a texture set on the background for the Paint Brush tool. The next time you open the Paint Brush tool, Paint Shop Pro will set the Styles and Textures to the same settings. With the Lock checked, the program will retain the last settings for the Styles and Textures, no matter what tool you use. I recommend you leave the Lock checked until you become more familiar with the Color Palette. It can be quite frustrating to find just the right shade of blue, then switch to the paint tool and have your blue turn to red!

  6. Preview - This part of the Color Palette will exhibit the values of a color and sample the color when you use the Eye Dropper tool to pick a color from a graphic or from the Available Colors window. You can set the preview to either RGB (Red/Green/Blue) or HSL (Hue/Saturation/Lightness) in the General Program Preferences (See my Configuring Paint Shop Pro tutorial). The graphic below illustrates the HSL Preview panel active.

Recent Colors

If you right click on the Foreground or Background color swatch, up pops a very cool feature. The Recent Colors palette, illustrated in the graphic below, contains ten standard colors on the top and the last ten colors you used on the bottom. This is a handy shortcut to set your color to black or white or to reset your colors to a recently used color.

Jasc Color Dialog Box

Paint Shop Pro installs with the Jasc Color Dialog Box selected. You can change to the Standard Windows Color Picker in General Program Preferences>Dialogs and Palettes if you wish. I prefer Jasc's Dialog Box, so that's what I will cover here. The following graphic illustrates the Color Dialog box.

Basic Colors - This palette contains 48 colors you can use as a starting point to find the color you wish. Simply click on any color box and the colors will change to the color you selected.

Custom Colors - You can set any of the sixteen squares in this palette to any custom color you wish. To set a custom color pick A color in the color picker. The color will now reside in the "New Color" box. Then right-click on the New Color box and hold down the right mouse button and drag it to any square in the Custom Colors area. Hover over a square (the cursor will look like a Spray Nozze. Release the mouse button and you will fill the square with the new custom color. When you are working on complex graphics, it is always a good idea to save the colors you use as custom colors so that they will always be available to you.

Color Wheel - When you hover the cursor over the color wheel, you will notice that it turns into the Eye Dropper tool. Click anywhere in the outer ring and you will set the color to the value nearest your click. Then you can then click anywhere inside the middle square to obtain a variation on the color you selected.

Current Color - The current color can be set as HSL (Hue, Saturation and Lightness) or as RGB (Red, Green and Blue). Or, you can set a color by pasting a HTML code for a color in the box. You can adjust the current color by dragging the mouse around on the square in the middle of the color wheel, or you can adjust the current color by clicking on the down arrow on the HSL or RGB color and using the slider.

New Color/Old Color - This box contains the most current color. Old Color contains the last color set.

Link Colors - When activated, adjustments made to the grouped color settings (RGB and HSL) will reflect the current setting for the other grouped settings. Leaving Link Colors activated will give you more control over refining a color selection.

HTML Code - When you select a color, the HTML code for that color will appear in this box. This is very handy when you are trying to match a background color. But, a better plan for a background color on a web page is to create a 5x5 pixel tile of the background color you will be using in the background of your web page graphics and use this tile as your background rather than setting the HTML code for a background color. That way, you will always have a perfect match of colors.