Image palettes are a collection of the colors in an image with 16 to 256  colors.  The image palette displays the colors for painting and drawing in the image.  These palettes can be edited, saved in a file separate from the image and loaded into other images.  Paint Shop Pro has several preset image palettes that are located in the program "Palettes" folder. While the colors within the image palette can be changed, the number of colors can not be increased.

Image Palette Basics

Editing an Image Palette

  1. Choose>Colors>Edit Palette

  2. Select a method for sorting the colors from the Sort Order drop-down box.  Sorting the palette changes the arrangement of the way the colors are displayed and purely a matter of personal choice:

    • Palette Order - colors are arranged by palette number in rows,  starting from 0 at the left top row to 255 at the bottom right

    • Luminance - colors are arranged by their level of lightness.   Starting at the top with lighter colors and ending at the bottom with darker colors

    • Hue - colors are arranged by their location on the color wheel

  3. Double click on a color to replace it and when the color dialog box opens make your selection the then click OK

  4. Click Revert to return the edited palette to its original colors without closing the dialog box

  1. To save an edited palette click OK

Saving an Image Palette

  1. Choose>Colors>Save Palette

  2. Select the folder where you want to save the image palette.  It is advisable to save them in the same folder with the preset image palettes that are in Paint Shop Pro

  3. In the file name box select a name for the palette.  From the "Save as type" select the .pal format

  1. Click OK to save the palette

Loading an Image Palette

Palettes can be loaded into images with 16 or more colors.  The color depth of the image decreases to match the palette when necessary.

  1. Choose>Colors>Load Palette

  2. Highlight the image palette

  3. Select one of the three methods for loading the image palette

    • Nearest Matching Color - will change the color in the open image to match the nearest color in the palette

    • Error Diffusion Dithering - dithers the colors that are not in the palette in an attempt to maintain the image appearance

    •  Maintain Indexes - each color in the palette is assigned a sequential index number, as is each color in the image.  Then each color in the image is changed in the image to the like numbered color in the palette

  1. Select Open to load the palette

 

Lesson Plan

Now that we have covered the basics of image palettes you are ready to go have some fun. Here is an online tutorial and an excercise. Please submit at least one tutorial result to the group or you can submit one for each tutorial.

You can do anything you like, use any image you like and you can use any plugin or filter. Be creative, but, please use the basics of the tutorials.

PSP 7 Image Palette

  1. Loading Image Palette - http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.cox.net%2Ftutorials1%2Fpalette%2Fpalette.html

  2. Image Palette Exercise - http://pspimaginarium.com/palettes.html

  3. Web Safe Color Palettes - http://www.unesco.org/webworld/infotraining/color-depth.html

 

Bonus

 

PSP 8 – Now Called Materials Palette!

 

  1. Intro to Materials Palette - http://www.tut.pspug.org/tut8eff/intro_v8.htm

  2. Materials Palette - http://www.psphelp.com/Version8/v8materials%20palette.html

  3. Creating Backgrounds using Materials Palette - http://www.bjwebart.com/materials_background.html

 

Bonus

 

Lesson Resources

 

Lesson Submittal

Please remember to resize your final image so that it is no larger than 350 pixels on the largest/longest side. Please name your results as:

 Your name - image palettes (for tutorial 1)

Your name - image palettes (for tutorial 2)

 

Submit your results to the group at

http://pspimaginarium.com/forum

 

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