An image palette is a collection of colors that an image uses—similar to a painter’s palette of paints. An image palette is a subset of all the colors your monitor can display.
Images with color depths of 16 to 256 colors have an image palette that contains those colors that are used in the image. You can edit this palette to fine-tune colors or create interesting color effects.
Images with a color depth of 16 million colors do not have an image palette because they can contain all the colors your computer can display. For these images, you can load an image palette to decrease the image’s color depth to 256 colors or 8-bit. Loading a palette produces the same result as using the Decrease Color Depth command, except that you are controlling which colors are used in the converted image. For more information on color depth, see Understanding Color Depth.
Paint Shop Pro also includes a Safety palette for creating Web images that can be viewed without color distortion on most monitors. Using this palette produces the same result as using the Decrease Color Depth > 256 Colors (8-bit) command and selecting the Standard/Web-safe palette option. For more information, see Using the Web-Safe Color Palette.
You can also create and save your own palettes. Preset palettes are located in the Palettes folder of the Paint Shop Pro program folder. You can store your custom palettes there as well.
To edit an image palette of 16 to 256 color images:
Choose Image > Palette > Edit Palette.
Note: This command is not available for 16 million color images.
To change the sort order (or arrangement) of colors, select an option from the Sort Order drop-down list: Palette Order (in order by the way the palette stores the colors), By Luminance (in order by lightness) or By Hue (in order by color).
To replace a color, double-click it. The Color dialog opens and displays the Jasc Color Picker. For more information, see Choosing Colors from the Jasc Color Picker. Make your selection and click OK. Notice that the image updates with the new color. To return the palette to its original colors, on the Edit Palette dialog click the Revert button.
Click OK.
To save an image palette:
Choose Image > Palette > Save Palette.
Select the folder where you want to save the palette. It’s most convenient to save it in the Palettes folder of the Paint Shop Pro program folder, where the preset image palettes are saved.
In the File name edit box, type a name for the palette. Paint Shop Pro automatically adds the .PspPalette extension when you save the file.
In the Save as type box, select a palette format: Jasc palette (the default) or Microsoft (for use with other applications).
Click Save.
To load an image palette:
Choose Image > Palette > Load Palette.
Select the folder which contains the palette you want to load. Preset image palettes are stored in the Palettes folder of the Paint Shop Pro program folder.
Select the palette.
In the Apply palette using group box, select an option:
Nearest color matching Changes each image color to the color in the palette that is the closest match.
Error diffusion dithering Attempts to maintain the image’s appearance by dithering colors that are not in the palette. Dithering places pixels of different colors next to each other to simulate missing colors.
Maintain indexes Assigns each color in the palette a sequential index number and does the same for each color in the image, then changes each color in the image to the like-numbered color in the palette.
Click Open. The palette is loaded and the image’s colors are updated.
Understanding Color and Color Models
How Monitor and Print Colors Differ
Making a Palette Color Transparent