Learn: GRPH 340 + Corporate Identity

05: Color Systems

Making Custom Color Palettes

Establishing custom color pallates to use for your projects is crucial. Being able to use those colors in different applications (sharing colors between Photoshop & Illustrator) is also important. In order to reinforce a companies Identity, consistent and repeated use of a color palette will reinforce the companies brand, and build valuable visual equity for the company.

The Business of Color

Color is standardized in the graphics arts world much like words are categorized and defined in a dictionary. The company Pantone is the industry standard in North America for mixing, creating, and organizing colors for a variety of mediums.

Using Photoshop to create color palettes

You can use Photoshop’s Save For Web feature to extract usable colors and create color pallates from photographs.

ImageReady's Save For Web Dialog Box

• 1) With an image open in Photoshop, File > Save For Web

• 2) Photoshop will open the Save or Web Palette (ImageReady). Choose Gif from the format drop down box. Experiment with Perceptual, Selective, and Adaptive color methods.

Indexed Color Pallet Options
Perceptual — The Perceptual Palette gives priority to those colors to which the human eye is most sensitive.

Selective — The Selective Palette gives weight to both those colors to which the human eye is most sensitive and web-safe colors. This option usually produces images with the greatest color integrity.

Adaptive — The Adaptive Palette is based on specific colors in the image, giving priority to the colors appearing most often.
Selecting any of the three palettes referred to above will allow you to change the number of colors in the image.

Web — The Web Palette used the 217 colors common to the PC and Mac operating systems. Not reccomended for this procedure.

• 3) Choose the amount of colors you want indexed from this image by specifying number in the Colors Drop Down

• 4) From the Fly Away menu in the top right, Select Save Color Table… and save this .act file into your folder along with your other files. This is a portable color table you can load into Photoshop on any computer to use.

• 5)Load this color table into Photoshop, Window> Swatches and select the Fly Away Menu and Load Swatches. Select your custom color Pallate. These colors can now be used in Photoshop.

Exporting a color palates from PhotoShop to share between programs

To share custom color swatches between Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2, and Adobe InDesign CS2, choose Save Swatches For Exchange from the Swatches palette menu to save your set of swatches in the Adode Swatch Exchange file format, ’.ase’.

Then, import this file by choosing Load Swatches from the Swatches palette menu in Illustrator (or InDesign). Swatch files in the Adobe Swatch Exchange file format can be read by CS3 versions of Adobe Golive, Illustrator, InDesign, and Adobe Photoshop.

For More Info, Read: Illustrator Tips: Color Swatches

Class Reading: Pages 110 – 113

Last Updated 14 February 2007 by Todd Roeth

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