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4. Make sure all the settings are set to default, and don't change anything else. Hit OK to reduce the color depth (see left). You won't see a big change in the image itself, but check out the materials palette (below). Quite a difference, eh?
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Tip: The materials palette can only display 256 colors if you're working on a gif, so that's why it looks much different from the usual 16 million color rainbow display. You don't have to reduce the color depth of an image for the materials palette to change like this, just opening up a gif image will automatically reduce the amount of colors the materials palette can display as well.
5. Now left-click on the foreground color square on the materials palette (mine is the pale green color above right). This is what you should now see (shown at right). Hmmmm...different huh? What we're seeing is the full-sized materials palette, with the usual gradient and pattern tabs (which will still look the same if you click on them) however the color palette itself looks very different. This is because it is now telling us that there are only 256 colors available, instead of the usual 16 million.
If you look carefully at the drop-down menu, you'll see the Palette Sorter. There are three views for the Palette Sorter. 'Palette' shows you how the colors appear on the image palette; 'Hue' re-arranges the colors on the palette in order of color, and 'Luminance' re-arranges them in order of lightest to darkest.
Left-clicking on any color square on the palette will select that color. Have fun and experiment until you get a color scheme you like. If you're looking to use a group of colors close together on the color palette, sort them by 'Hue'. To change the background color, just click on that instead of the foreground box first - just like we did at the beginning of Step 5. |
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6. If you only want to use the palette once, and you're pretty sure you're never going to need it again, just close the original image (the fairies) when you've finished and your materials palette will default back to normal again. Even if you don't close the original image, every time you open an existing psp or jpg image, or create a new image, your color palette will automatically default back to 16 million colors. But what if you'd like to save it? That's easy too!
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7. Go to Image>Palette>Save Palette. This brings up a new dialogue box (shown at right). In the Name box, type in any name you wish (as you can see I typed in 'Fairies' - not a very original choice, I know ;-). Then all you have to do is hit OK. Whenever you want to work with this image palette again in the future just go to Image>Palette>Load and choose the 'Fairies' palette from the drop-down menu. You won't need to re-open the original image we created it from in order to use it.
Tip: If you wish to work with image palettes, or with reduced colors and you notice your options on the Image>Palette menu are greyed out, it's telling you you're still working in 16 million color-mode. So, make sure you decrease those colors first, or have a gif image already open.
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A final word: If you'd like more information on the use of color on the web and utilities to help you choose color schemes, there are lots of great links on my Resources page.
Have fun with your new toy ;-)
© Graphic Allusions 2003-2005. |
