An image palette is a collection of colors that an image uses — similar to a painter’s palette. An image palette is a subset of all the colors your monitor can display. Not all images have image palettes — only images with color depths between 16 and 256 colors have palettes that you can fine-tune and edit.
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 (8-bit). Loading a palette produces the same result as decreasing color depth, except that you are controlling which colors are used in the converted image. For more information about color depth, see Understanding color depth.
You can also create and save your own palettes. Preset palettes are located in the Palettes folder of the Corel PaintShop Pro program folder. When you save a palette, you can load it into other images. This is a good way to maintain consistent colors across several images. Saving a palette is also useful if you are making many color changes and want to save a backup copy of the palette.
If you are using a palette with the current image only, you don’t need to save it as a separate file because the palette colors are saved with the image itself.
Editing the palette of a grayscale image
If you edit the color palette for a grayscale image, you are prompted to change the image to 8-bit indexed color. This allows you to add color to your grayscale image.
Using the Web-Safe color palette
Corel PaintShop Pro includes a Web-safe, 256-color palette, the Safety palette. Images using this palette can be viewed without color distortion on most computer monitors. There are three ways to use this palette on an image:
• You can load the Safety palette into your image. For 16 million color (24-bit) images, this flattens the layers and reduces the image’s color depth to 256 colors (8-bit), which limits the available commands.
• You can decrease the image’s color depth to 256 colors and select the Standard/Web-Safe Palette option. Decreasing the color depth also flattens layers and makes some commands unavailable.
• You can edit the image in 16 million colors (saving it to the PspImage file format), then use the GIF Optimizer or PNG Optimizer to export a copy of the image. These optimizers use the Web-safe palette by default and decrease the color depth in the saved image. This is recommended because it does not change the color depth or flatten the layers of your original PspImage file. For more information about saving optimized images, see Saving images for the Web.
Making a palette color transparent
Paletted images (those with 256 or fewer colors) do not support transparent backgrounds, but you often need a way to make part of your image transparent when you are using an image on a Web page. For example, you may have a round logo and you want the background of the Web page to display around the logo.
Most Web browsers can choose not to display one color, effectively making it transparent. In Corel PaintShop Pro, you have two ways to make a color transparent:
• You can make one color in an image palette transparent. The color can be the background color or any color from the image. To set a transparent color, the image must have only one layer and use an image palette, which means the image must have a color depth less than 16 million colors (24-bit).
• You can edit a 16 million-color image, save it to the PspImage file format, then use the GIF or PNG optimizer to export a copy of the image. With these optimizers you can set the transparency of the image. This is recommended because it does not change the color depth or flatten the layers of your original PspImage file. For more information saving optimized images, see Saving images for the Web.
To edit an image palette of 16 to 256 color images
Edit workspace
1 Choose ImagePaletteEdit Palette.
This command is not available for 16 million color images.
2 Perform one or more tasks from the following table, and click OK.
To
Do the following
Change the sort order of the colors
Select an option from the Sort Order drop-list.
Replace a color
Double-click the color, choose a color from the Color page, and click OK.
Reset the palette to the original colors
In the Edit Palette dialog box, click Revert.
To save an image palette
Edit workspace
1 Choose ImagePaletteSave Palette.
The Save Palette dialog box appears.
2 Type a name for the palette in the Filename box.
3 Click Edit Paths.
The File Locations dialog box appears.
4 Choose the folder where you want to save the palette in the Palette Folder group box.
If you save the palette in the Palettes folder of the Corel PaintShop Pro program folder, you can access the palette as a preset.
5 Click OK.
6 In the Save palette as group box, select a palette format option:
PSP palette — the default palette format
Microsoft palette — palette format used for other applications
7 Click Save.
Corel PaintShop Pro automatically adds the .PspPalette filename extension when you save the file.
To load an image palette
Edit workspace
1 Choose ImagePaletteLoad Palette.
The Load Palette dialog box appears.
2 In the Palette drop-list, click the File Locations button .
The File Locations dialog box appears.
3 Choose the folder which contains the palette you want to load, and choose a palette.
Preset image palettes are stored in the Palettes folder of the Corel PaintShop Pro program folder.
4 Click OK.
5 In the Apply Palette Using group box, select one of the following options:
• 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 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. Each color in the image is then changed to the like-numbered color in the palette.
6 Click Load.
The palette is loaded and the image colors are updated.
If you load a palette and do not like the results, you can revert to the original image by pressing Ctrl + Z to undo the action.
To load the Web-safe color palette
Edit workspace
1 Choose ImagePaletteLoad Palette.
The Load Palette dialog box appears.
2 In the Palette drop-list, click the File Locations button .
The File Locations dialog box appears.
3 Navigate to the Palettes folder in the Corel PaintShop Pro program folder, and choose Safety.
4 In the Apply Palette Using group box, choose one of the following options:
• 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. This option is not available for 16 million-color images.
5 Click Load.
To make one image color transparent
Edit workspace
1 Choose ImagePaletteSet Palette Transparency.
If you are prompted to reduce the color depth and number of layers, click Yes to continue and then choose the options for decreasing color depth.
2 On the Set Palette Transparency dialog box, choose one of the following options:
• Set the transparency value to the current background color — makes the background color transparent
• Set the transparency value to a palette entry — specifies a color to be transparent. Click the color in the image, or click the color box to select from the current color picker.
If you want to view the transparency, click Proof.
3 Click OK.
The color is now transparent; however, it may still be displayed until you hide it.