How to Create a Custom Image Palette in PSP 8

Graphic design and web page design in theory, is quite simple. You just sit down in front of your computer, load up PSP, or Photoshop (or whatever) and quickly whip up a background, a banner, a couple of web buttons and then whack them all together using the magic of a little html, right?? WRONG. Sure, there's always the learning curve of PSP, or PS to overcome, but once that's achieved it should all be a snap huh? WRONG. Well, what about using some snazzy html editor (such as Dreamweaver, Front Page et al.) that makes it all the more easier, right?? WRONG.

The most difficult thing to overcome if you're a graphic designer can be deciding just what colors you're going to use.

Now, if you're not naturally artistically-inclined (c'est moi!) nor blessed with an eye for color and design this can be quite a struggle. I know this, heck, we all know this, from our own browsing experience online. How many times have you come across garish confections of purple, orange, green, aqua and red, and often all on the same page?! (Well, I may be exaggerating here a little, but you get my drift).

Ya know, when faced with such a bewildering and dazzling array of some 16 million colors, it's no wonder a lot of people out there get a little, ahem, color-crazy. In my opinion, the use of migraine-inducing color combos on a web page is a sure sign of a beginner, or someone who is hopelessly at sea when it comes to color co-ordination (or lack thereof). So what can we ordinary Joes and Josephines who feel we are somewhat aesthetically-challenged (again, c'est moi!) do about our handicap?? Well, if you look, there's tons of advice on the use of color and design, and countless articles and other help online, but thankfully we PSP users don't have to look too far for help.....

PSP has a wonderful feature that comes to the rescue - the image palette. It's a wonderful tool which makes it easy to create more aesthetically pleasing color schemes. The image palette contains only a specific number of colors, instead of the entire 16 million color rainbow. By restricting the amount of colors available you can come up with much more effective and professional-looking color schemes. You can also play around with the order of the colors displayed, which makes it very easy to choose two or three colors that are close together on the palette which will complement each other well on a web page. Not only is it good for the 'color-challenged', it's also great for those times when you hit the creative wall (this happens to me a LOT). It can be a great motivator and help kick-start your creativity when you need a little help.

Ok, so now you understand what the image palette is and why it can of great help to the color-challenged, I'll show you how to create one below, and how to get the most out of it.

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1.  Image palettes can only be created from an existing image, so we'll use the one above. Right-click to save it to your own hard drive. Now open it up in PSP. What you see here is a jpg image of a painting of fairies. Tip: I chose this image because I'm currently working on a project where I was looking for a green-based color scheme of soft, woodsy, forest tones, and this image fitted the bill. It's a good idea if you already have a basic color scheme in mind for your own project (i.e. reds, greens, blues etc.) because this can help you to choose the right image to create your palette from, but if you don't, that's okay too. Sometimes by just opening up any image and creating a palette from it, can be all the help you need to get the creative juices flowing. 2.  The first thing we have to do is to reduce the depth of color, or in other words, turn this jpg into a gif. Go to Image>Decrease Color Depth>256 colors (8 bit). We've now reduced our 16 million color image to just 256 colors (see right).

A word about image palettes: Image Palettes can only be created out of gif's because a gif image contains only 256 colors, as opposed to a jpg image which can contain up to 16 million. You cannot create a custom image palette from a jpg or a psp image without first reducing the color depth, because these image formats contain too many colors and therefore PSP can't reduce the number of colors down to the required 256 which are needed for an image palette.