Using the Colour Palette

By now you should have an idea of the size of PSP and all of the things that are available to you.  If you aren't sure of anything in PSP, and you haven't already, take a look at this tutorial for an overview of everything that is available in the programme.  

This tutorial is going to show you how to use the Colour Palette to help you to learn various ways of using the variety of tools to make or change colours on your image.

You will need:

A copy of PaintShop Pro - you can download a 30 day trial version from here

Fire up PSP then start a new image (File, New) - it can be any size you like... I like to use 300x300 on a transparent background but that's just personal preference  :o)

In the Colour Palette on the right hand side, you will have a variety of colours available.  Yours will look similar to this but the colours in the 4 small boxes may be different depending on the colours you last used. 

There are several basic things you need to know about the Colour Palette that you will use in the majority of your work in PSP from now on.

First you will notice that there are 5 different sections.  Lets take them each in order from the bottom to the top.

At the very bottom of the Colour Palette, you will notice a small check-box... it may be ticked or unticked for you - I've got mine ticked. 

If you haven't got a tick in there, single click in the box now to put a tick in there.  This means that you have locked your Colour Palette which is more useful than it sounds!  :o)

By locking your palette, the colour, gradient or texture that you last chose will stay where there until you choose something different.  If you have it unlocked, PSP will automatically change the colours for each tool you select - most of the time in PSP we want to use the same colours with different tools, so it is always useful to have this box ticked.  Check the screenshots on any tutorials to make sure that the tutorial writer hasn't unticked the box... most leave it locked though  :o)

The next section up is where most of the activity goes on in the Colour Palette.  

From here you can select colours from your image, you can choose your own colour, you can add gradients and textures and give each of those their own colours.  This is the nerve center of the Colour Palette.

Next, we've got the part of the Colour Palette that shows you how many colours you have got available to you.  This can be anything from 1 colour to 16 million colours - the screenshot below shows us that all 16 million colours are available for us to use in our image.

This is a useful part of the Colour Palette to use if you are restricted to only using a certain amount of colours.  You can set the number of colours you can use in the Colours menu in the toolbar and then pick your colour from here.  

Right at the top we have our final part of the Colour Palette.  You will notice that the colours in here are the same as the colours in the main part of the Colour Palette (the bit where all the activity goes on).  

Now that we've got an idea of what all the bits do, lets get our hand dirty and start *doing* something with our new-found knowledge!!  :o)