Color - Color Wells

The color panel, shown to the left, is used in conjunction with color wells, shown at the bottom right of this page, to change and manage colors of objects. You open the color panel by clicking on a color well, selecting the extras popup menu at the bottom of the font panel, or add the color button to the Toolbar.

A single color panel is used for all color changes and selections. This is actually a system provided panel so it may change in the future or appear differently on different systems. All color wells and font color selections are tied to the color panel. The panel shows the current color as a clue to confirm the panel is connected to the item of interest.

It is important to learn to notice the change in appearance of a Color Well when it is "Active" and connected to the Color Picker. Only one Color Well may be active at any given time. The active color well has a darker border to indicated it's state. It is possible to deactivate a color well - by clicking it when it is active. This means it is possible that NO color well is active. This can be confusing, as changes to the color will not be reflected on your drawing. It is also useful for making up new colors or experimenting with colors without modifying elements of your drawing.

There are many ways to chose colors, the buttons at the top of the panel are used to select the method. Selections can be the color wheel (shown in the example to the left), sliders for different color spaces and possibly many other methods. These methods are supplied by the system and may be expanded and shared by other applications or plugins.

You may change the color of a selected target object by using the current color selection method presented by the panel. Use the buttons at the top of the panel to specify a selection method.

The target of the changes will be either a selected color well, or selected text. If a color well is selected the changes will affect both the color well and the associated object of the color well (e.g. the fill of a graphic). If no color well or text is selected the panel may be used to manage the color swatches on the panel.

You may use the "magnifying glass" (upper right) to grab a color from any point on the screen. When this action is clicked on a color that color is copied to the large color swatch at the top of the panel indicating that it is the new target color. If a color well, or text is selected the color of the target will be changed to match the selection.

The Opacity slider or numeric entry field, near the bottom of the palette, allows transparency to be applied to a color. Transparency is applied to a graphic by the use of colors with transparency. When transparency is in effect the associated color well will draw both the master saturated color and the transparent color with a diagonal separator.

An example color well is shown to the right. This one is from the color and style parameter panel. EazyDraw has numerous color wells for everything from grid and background colors to blended gradients and shadows. All the color wells behave the same.

The target of the color changes is either a color well or a selected for editing font. Pay close attention to the color well's outline to verify that it is shown selected (darkened border) and is the proper target. A common problem is to click the color well, and deselect it (border will lighten). Normally the target color well follows your actions and will be selected and automatically targeted for the actions of the color panel. But there are several color wells pertaining to a drawing (or even a single graphic) so it is easy to misdirect to an unintended target.

The small boxes at the bottom of the panel are color receptacles or swatches. You may drag and drop to and from these swatches. They are convenient places to hold a set of colors being used in a drawing. If you enlarge the width of the color panel more swatches are provided.

There is also a way to apply transparency to all graphics on a layer. This is provided by the Color Modification controls on the Layers Drawer. The layer color modification feature is provided primarily to aid the user when working with layers, ie gray out an underlying layer while drawing on a related layer. You should use the Color Opacity trait to "draw" with transparency.

Transparency may or may not be supported in a particular export format or by another application on OS X or another operating environment. For example most Microsoft applications, at the time of this writing, do not support transparency. Also a printer may or may not render a transparency affect. Before investing significant creative time using this technique, one should export a test graphic with transparency effects and view with the target application or medium. That being said, very nice effects may be incorporated into your graphic content and exported seamlessly to new technology applications such as Keynote via TIF export format.