THE COLOR PALETTE

You can also use the Color palette (window>show colors) to mix new colours.

1. First identify which colour selection box is ‘active’. There are two boxes, foreground and background. The active box is outlined in blank.
2. Continue with step 3 if the correct box is active, or click the inactive box to make it the active box if necessary.
3. Drag the color slider triangles below the color slider bars, or enter values in the entry boxes to the right of the palette. You can also click on a colour in the color bar running along the bottom of the color palette. The color Bar contains every colour in the CMYK spectrum as a default setting.



4. Use the pop-up triangle in the top right of the palette to change the colour model for the sliders.
5. Choose an option from the bottom half of the pop-up menu to specify the colour model for the colours in the color Bar at the bottom of the palette.

SELECTING PANTONE COLOURS

You can access a range of color-matching systems using the color picker dialogue box. These include: toyo color finder 1050 system, Focoltone Colour System, PANTONE Matching system, Trumatch Swatching System and DIC color Guide. Here, we’ll select a PANTONE Colour.

1. To select a PANTONE color, click the foreground or background colour box. The Color Picker dialogue box will appear. Click the Custom button.
2. Use the book pop-up menu to select a PANTONE matching system.
3. If you know the PANTONE number of the colour you want, you can enter the number on the keyboard. Alternatively, click in the colour slider bar to the right of the PANTONE colour boxes. This moves you to a general rage of colours. Then click on the scroll bars at the top and bottom of the sliders to find the specific PANTONE colour you want.



4. Click on the colour you want to select, then click OK.

PHOTOSHOP COLOR PICKER PALETTE

One of the most powerful and flexible ways of choosing foreground and background colours is using the color picker palette. You can us a number of different colour models to create colour.

1. To create a process colour using the color picker, click once on either the foreground or background colour box.
2. Enter values in the CMYK entry boxes. You will see a preview of the colour in the current color swatch, above the previous color swatch.
3. Ok the dialogue box. The colour you defined now becomes the foreground or background colour, depending on which box you clicked in step 1.



You can also create colours using the color slider and the color field. The next example uses Hue, Saturation and Brightness values. Use the same techniques for Red, Green, Blue (RGB) and Lab colour models.

1. To create a colour using Hue, Saturation and Brightness (HSB) values, first click the Hue (H) radio button.
2. Click on the color slider bar, or drag the slider triangles on either side of the bar, to choose a hue or colour. This sets one of the three HSB values. The number in the Hue entry box represents the hue you have chosen (0-360).
3. Next, click in the color Field to set the other two variables – Saturation and Brightness. Clicking to the left of the field reduces the saturation, clicking to the right increases the saturation of the selected hue. Clicking near the bottom decreases brightness, clicking near the top increase brightness for the selected hue.
4. If you click on the Saturation button, the color slider now represents saturation (from 0-100) and the color field allows you to choose Hue and Brightness values. When you click the Brightness values. When you click the Brightness radio button, the slider represents Brightness and the color field represents Hue and Saturation.

Web-safe colours

1. To create a web-safe colour, select the only web colors option. Fewer color Field; each color exists in the web palette which consists of 216 colours.

IMAGE MODES

Image modes are fundamental to working in Photoshop. When you open an image the mode is indicated in the title bar of the image window. There are eight different modes in Photoshop. Use modes are appropriate to your working requirements. Then, depending on output or printing requirements. Then, depending on output or printing requirements, if necessary, convert to a different mode.

RGB Mode
Images are typically scanned or captured in RGB mode. When you start work with a colour image it is usually best to work in RGB mode, as this is faster than CMYK mode and allows you to use all of Photoshop’s commands and features, providing greatest flexibility.

The disadvantage of working in RGB mode, if your image will be printed, is that RGB allows a greater gamut of colours than you can print. At some stage, some of the brightest, most vibrant colours may lose their brilliance when the image is brought within the CMYK gamut.


CMYK mode
Convert to CMYK when the image is to be printed and you have finished making changes.

To place a colour image in a page layout application from where it will be colour separated, you need to convert from RGB to CMYK. When you convert from RGB to CMYK, photoshop adjusts any colours in the RGB image that fall outside the CMYK gamut to their nearest printable colour. (See Chapter Five, ‘Defining Colours’, for details on gamut warnings.)

You can also select Display out of Gamut colours from the view menu, to highlight (in grey) areas of the image that are out of gamut.

Indexed Color mode
This mode reduces your image to 256 colours or less and is frequently used for multimedia and web images.

Duotone For details on using Duotone mode see page 60.

Grayscale mode
When you are not printing an image in colour you can convert to Grayscale mode to make working faster and file size smaller.

Lab mode
This mode uses the CIE Lab mode which has one channel for luminosity, an ‘a’ channel representing colours blue to yellow and a ‘b’ channel for magenta to green. A significant advantage to this mode is that its gamut encompasses that of both CMYK and RGB modes.

Bitmap mode
This mode reduces everything to black or white pixels. The image becomes a one-bit image.


Multichannel mode
Multichannel mode uses 256 levels of grey in each channel. When you convert RGB or CMYK images to multichannel mode, the original channels in the image are converted to spot colour channels. Multichannel mode is an advanced option-only use it if you have a detailed understanding of the printing process.