Creating Your Own Palette in PSP



This tutorial was created in PSP 7, but will mostly likely work in PSP 6, too.
In order to create this skintone palette I went on the internet and saved photos of people of different skin colors. It might also be handy for a palette of colors you've used for a website.



1. Open a blank canvas, background white. It doesn't need to be large, mine here is 200x100.
2. Now choose the colors that you want in your palette. Because I'm making a skin color palette, I opened my photos so I could use the color picker on them.
3. Using the paintbrush with these settings make little squares of color on your canvas. I don't think they have to be orderly like mine, that's just my nature. LOL
Paintbrush settings


4. When you have added all your colors you need to decrease the color depth to either 16 or 256 colors. I went to COLORS-COUNT COLORS USED and it said 20 so I'm going to reduce mine to 256. Go to COLORS-DECREASE COLOR DEPTH and choose the one you want. I accepted the default when it gave choices.
Decrease colors

5. I created my color squares on the background, but if you used a layer you'll need to MERGE ALL-FLATTEN before saving.
6. Save the palette by going to COLORS-SAVE PALETTE. Open your PSP palette folder and name your palette. You have choice of two types, Jasc Palette or Microsoft Palette. If you have other programs you might want to use the palette in then save as Microsoft. I will only be using it in PSP so I'm saving as Jasc.
Save Palette

7. Now when you want to use this palette go to COLORS-LOAD PALETTE and choose the one you want. When the palette is loaded it will look something like this.
Palette loaded
I found the basic information about this in the PSP 7 help files. There is still a lot I don't know, but if and when I learn more about this I'll update this tutorial. While this seems like a good idea on the surface I'm not sure how handy it will be in real use. Once you open the palette you only have those specific colors available and they are in less then the 16million we usually work in. Alternately you could save this as a psp format file instead and just have it open on your desktop for use with the color picker. However it's always nice to learn something new and I hope you have with this tutorial.:)

Email me if you have any problems.

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Tutorial, graphics and screenshots © by Jan Lewis
Purrcat Designs 2001