Bungalow 104

Color Tables & Custom Palettes

Create color schemes and custom color tables from photographs using ImageReady or Photoshop.

  1. Open a photograph in ImageReady 3.0, and set the Optimize format to GIF.
  2. Select a color table from the dropdown list in the Optimize palette:
    • Perceptual gives priority to colors to which our eyes are most sensitive.
    • Selective favors broad areas of color and preservation of Web colors.
    • Adaptive samples colors appearing most commonly in the image.
    • Web uses the standard 216-color table common to Window and Mac 256-color palettes.
  3. In the Optimize palette, reduce the number of Colors as desired. In this case, I chose 8 to create the resulting Color Table.
  4. Save the Color Table as an ACT file.
  5. In ImageReady or Photoshop, Replace Swatches with the ACT file just saved.
  6. In Photoshop, selecting “Small List” from the Swatch Palette options will display hex values alongside each color swatch.

You can follow a similar procedure in Photoshop:

  1. Image > Mode > Indexed Color.
  2. In the Indexed Color options box, select a palette and enter the number of colors desired. With Preview checked and Dither set to None, experiment with the number of colors until satisfied. Then click on OK.
  3. Image > Mode > Color Table, and Save the Custom table as a *.ACT file.
  4. In the Swatch palette, Replace swatches with the *.ACT file just saved.