BrushTalk

I recently came across two very useful websites housing large and inspirational collections of five swatch color schemes; ColourLovers and Kuler.

Whist RGB values can readily entered in Painter via. the Color Info palette, then added to a new or existing Color Set, there is no global color picker to sample color directly from a web page displaying the required swatches. On the Mac, it is possible to double click the Main Color preview swatch in the Colors palette and then use the global color picker in the System Colors palette to sample the desired color from the web page. This would then update the Main Color in Painter after clicking OK in the System Colors dialogue. I found this latter method inaccurate however, when comparing the actual RGB values in Painter, with those given for the sampled swatches.

It is also possible to manually write/edit a Painter Color Set text file if the RGB values for each swatch are known. After some experimentation, I found an optimum size for each swatch which would give me 5 columns (one per swatch) so that all 5 swatches would display on one row in the Color Sets palette. Subsequent ‘5 color’ schemes saved in the Color Set would also have their own individual rows.

The screen shots below show part of the Color Set palette which I edited to contain the Beautiful Butterflies & their Color Palettes collection from ColourLovers. Note that as I named each swatch in the text file, it is also possible to display the color set along with the names. This is achieved by selecting ‘Display Name’ from the Color Sets palette menu. A third option is to display each swatch with or without a bordering grid. This option is also selected from the Color Sets palette menu.

ROWS 1
COLS 5
WIDTH 34
HEIGHT 24
TEXTHEIGHT 14
MODIFIED 1
SPACING 1
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 1
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 2
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 3
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 4
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 5

The above 12 lines of text may be copied and pasted at the very top of a new text document created in say Note Pad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). This document will act as a template for creating ‘5 column’ color sets from known RGB values.

I’m on the Mac platform, so assume that I have already copied and pasted the above into a new TextEdit document. In the following example, I’m going to create a 3 row color set, with 5 swatches per row. There is currently a nice collection frog and toad inspired color schemes created by fazai38 on the ColourLovers website here. For this example color set, I will add the first 3 Frog schemes (BlackSpot Green, Blue spot and MultiColor Spot Frog) and show you the resulting Color Set opened in Painter IX.

As the last five lines of text in our color set document represent 1 row of 5 swatches (equivalent to 1 frog color scheme), we first need to do two things to our color set text. The first is to copy the last five line of the text and paste twice directly under each other. Secondly, we need to increase the number of rows on the first line from 1 to 3 (3 rows of 5 swatches). This is what it should now look like;

ROWS 3
COLS 5
WIDTH 34
HEIGHT 24
TEXTHEIGHT 14
MODIFIED 1
SPACING 1
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 1
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 2
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 3
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 4
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 5
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 1
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 2
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 3
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 4
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 5
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 1
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 2
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 3
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 4
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 name 5

We now need to obtain the RGB values for each swatch so that we can edit them into our text color set file. Clicking in the BlackSpot Green Frog palette image on the previously linked page should take you to here. Scrolling down this linked page, you will see all the individual swatches which make up the above palette, with their respective RGB values given below. These values are then used to replace the existing RGB: values in our template document. Note that the RGB values expressed in the Color Set document must always be in 3 digit format, so an R value of 24 is written 024 and a G value of 3 for example, would be written 003

I note that the first swatch for this frog has an RGB value of 251, 254, 225, so I will edit the first swatch line of the color set to read as follows;

R: 251, G:254, B:225 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 BlackSpot Green Frog 1

Associating names to color swatches is optional in Painter, but may help later when searching for a previously used swatch by name. I have therefore called my first color swatch BlackSpot Green Frog 1. Below is what the text should look like after entering all the values and swatch names for the first three frog palettes;

ROWS 3
COLS 5
WIDTH 34
HEIGHT 24
TEXTHEIGHT 14
MODIFIED 1
SPACING 1
R: 251, G:254, B:225 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 BlackSpot Green Frog 1
R: 236, G:241, B:185 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 BlackSpot Green Frog 2
R: 024, G:037, B:045 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 BlackSpot Green Frog 3
R: 130, G:164, B:139 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 BlackSpot Green Frog 4
R: 202, G:232, B:170 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 BlackSpot Green Frog 5
R: 186, G:219, B:250 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 Blue spot Frog 1
R: 081, G:122, B:184 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 Blue spot Frog 2
R: 049, G:076, B:143 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 Blue spot Frog 3
R: 002, G:020, B:044 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 Blue spot Frog 4
R: 083, G:140, B:195 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 Blue spot Frog 5
R: 152, G:148, B:075 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 MultiColor Spot Frog 1
R: 225, G:121, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 MultiColor Spot Frog 2
R: 003, G:004, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 MultiColor Spot Frog 3
R: 116, G:097, B:103 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 MultiColor Spot Frog 4
R: 247, G:213, B:165 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 MultiColor Spot Frog 5

The final step in TextEdit (Mac) is (with our open text document to the front) to select Format menu > Make Plain Text, and Save As ColourLovers Frogs.txt for example. Below is a screen shot of the above manually edited color set opened in Painter IX;

To obtain RGB values for a selected palette from the Kuler website, click on the icon immediately to the left of the word Welcome!. This will take you to the theme create/edit page where RGB values are displayed at the bottom.

Tips

1. On the Mac, editing the text file in Rich Text format, then converting to Plain Text before saving will prevent unnecessary eye strain.
2. Ensure there are no extra blank lines after the last line in the text file and the text does not line wrap (i.e each row of text must be on a seperate line).

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