3: The Colors Palette

The Colors palette is used to select and edit colors and patterns. It can be opened from the Tools menu [Command-Y] or by double-clicking the Eyedropper tool.








Normally, the Colors palette displays just the Background, Frame, and Fill colors on a section at the bottom of the Tools palette. Clicking and dragging on the "PULL" label "tears" it off into a separate, expanded palette. Clicking the close box on the top left of the expanded Colors palette returns it to the bottom of the Tools palette.

The Background color area (top or left) indicates the color or pattern used for the background color. This fills holes created when selections are moved, cleared or cut.

The Frame color area in the middle indicates the color or pattern chosen for frames.

The Fill color area (lower right) indicates the color or pattern used in painting and fill operations. Clicking in one of the areas selects it. The selected color type is shown with a dashed line surrounding it.

The pop-up in the expanded palette lets you choose the display for the Colors palette. Four different displays are available for the bottom portion of the Colors palette: Color Grid, Sliders, Scratch Pad, and Patterns. Change the displayed set by clicking the pop-up menu at the right end of the palette or the page corner "dogear" icon in the lower right corner of the expanded palette.

Color Grid

The Color Grid (shown above) displays colors that may be chosen by clicking on a color square. The number of colors displayed depends on the type of document open. A grid of 256 colors appears for documents with 256 colors to millions of colors; while documents with 16 or fewer colors will display a grid of 16 colors. Grayscale documents with 256 levels show a grid of 256 grays; documents with 16 or fewer grays display a grid of 16 gray levels. The pop-up menu on the right end of the palette gives you a choice of different color sets. Specialized color sets or those you create or modify appear at the bottom of the list.

NOTE: The Netscape Optimized color set contains the 216 colors common to both the Mac and Windows versions of Netscape that do not dither.This set is courtesy of MicroFrontier customer Cameron T. Murray.

Clicking the Edit button brings up a dialog box where color sets are edited or created. Clicking on the Color Set pop-up at the upper left lets you choose from existing sets or create a new color set.

NOTE: Some of the color sets shown when the Color Sets pop-up is chosen from the Colors palette (256 System Colors, 16 System Colors, 256 Grays and 16 Grays) are System color sets that are not editable.

Selecting New Set opens a dialog box where you enter the name of the new set. The Color Set Size pop-up lets you choose the number of colors in the set (16, 36, 64 or 256). Clicking OK saves the new set in the Color Sets folder inside the wwwART Stuff folder (located inside the wwwART folder on your hard drive). New sets are grayscale until edited.

Color squares are selected by clicking on them. Clicking the Copy button copies the selected color squares. The squares may be pasted into other squares by clicking on the squares and clicking the Paste button. Clicking the Clear button changes selected color squares to black. The Undo/Redo button is a toggle that lets you reverse the last action taken for selected squares. The Pick button opens the standard Apple color picker, where a color can be selected by clicking within the color wheel, moving sliders, or entering values in the text boxes.

A range of squares can be selected by clicking and dragging. The Blend button changes the selected color squares to a blend between the first and last squares selected.

The Sort button opens a dialog box that lets you choose methods of sorting the selected colors in the set. The Primary and Secondary pop-up menus offer several choices for sort methods.

The Reverse button swaps the order of the selected color squares (upper left corner to lower right corner).

The Warm, Cool, Light and Dark buttons change the selected colors by changing their color values. Clicking the button again repeats the operation on the newly-changed color.

The Tint button opens a dialog box where a value from -20 to 20 can be entered. The starting color square is tinted by the value entered in the next square, and repeated to the ending square (for 5%, the second square is 5% lighter, the next 10% lighter, etc.) Positive ranges lighten the selected colors; negative values darken the selected colors.

Sliders

Sliders displays controls to change the selected color. The pop-up lets you choose between RGB and Grayscale sliders. The sliders are adjusted by clicking and dragging on the button. Clicking on the pointers at each end changes the settings one unit at a time. The color units used are determined by the setting in the Preferences dialog (see Chapter 7, the Edit Menu) or by choosing a unit from the pop-up in the Mouse Tracking palette when no documents are open (see Chapter 11, The Tools Menu). Changes made are reflected in the selected color areas (Background, Frame or Fill) at the left side of the palette.

Scratch Pad

The Scratch Pad allows you to experiment with wwwART's brush tools, test changes to a portion of the image without changing the original image, and store a range of colors for use on the original.

The commands in the Options pop-up menu let you import images into the Scratch Pad.

The Grab From Image command lets you grab a portion of the document and place it on the Scratch Pad. When you select the command, a dialog box appears where you can select a portion of your document to copy to the Scratch Pad.

To make a new selection, move the cursor over the selection rectangle, then click and drag the rectangle to select a different portion of the document. For finer control, move the cursor over the box on the left, then click and drag to nudge the selection. Once you have selected a new area, click the Grab button.

The Paste From Clipboard command pastes the clipboard contents into the Scratch Pad. Clipboard images are scaled to fit.

The Clear command deletes the contents of the Scratch Pad.

The Save command saves the contents of the Scratch Pad.

The Revert command undoes any changes made to the Scratch Pad.

Clicking the Eyedropper checkbox turns tools moved over the Scratch Pad into the Eyedropper tool. Clicking on the Scratch Pad then selects the color at the point selected.

Patterns

Pattern fills can be used like any other fill for selections, as paint for brushes, etc. wwwART comes with a number of patterns. Additional pattern sets may be purchased from MicroFrontier, or created in our Color It! application (sold separately).

The Pattern Set pop-up lets you choose which set to display from the pattern sets stored in the Pattern Sets folder in the wwwART Stuff folder.

Select a pattern in the palette by clicking on the pattern's sample square. The selected pattern has a grey frame around it, and the pattern appears in the selected color square to the far left of the Colors palette. The scroll bar and scroll arrows at the right side of the patterns can be used to make more of the patterns in the set (if any) visible.

A pattern can be used as a fill for a brush, permitting you to paint with patterns. Any attributes that can be applied to a brush such as style, size and opacity may be used.

The Convert Set... option on the pattern set pop-up opens a standard dialog where you can locate a pattern set. MicroFrontier's Pattern Libraries and other sets may be in an older pattern format that needs to be converted for use with wwwART. Choose a set from the list in the dialog box and click the Open button.

Another dialog box opens that permits you to save the converted pattern set. In order to use the new pattern set, it must be saved inside the Pattern Sets folder in the wwwART Stuff folder. The converted pattern set is immediately accessible via the Colors palette.

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