new feature suggestion - a palette editor

I know that it is most likely too late to ask for any new features for the next versions, but perhaps for future a palette editor would nice feature to have.

A palette editor would work much like the Xpal utility created years ago, and still available on the Xara Xone Shareware pages, but would also have controls for importing palette files, and for selecting colours from a group of vector objects as well as a bitmap image.

so for example you could create a set of rectangles for swatches, use the colour editor to edit the colours and name them, you would have them all selected and open the palette editor and you could click import from selection and the palette editor would generate your palette of colours which would be named according to the names you gave them with the colour editor.

A save button could save the palette to the program,s palettes folder and an import button could allow you to browse and select any palette files that Xara can use and save them to the palettes folder.

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Originally Posted by angelize

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so for example you could create a set of rectangles for swatches, use the colour editor to edit the colours and name them...

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Frances if you save your .xar file at that point you would have your palette. Simply open the .xar file when you want to use those colours and have it shown in the Color Line.

As for browsing and selecting palettes you can do so in Windows Explorer

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Originally Posted by Xara Help

Importing colors and Palettespalettes


You can import the following color table and palette files:

• CorelDRAW Palettee .CPL and .PAL
• Adobe Color Tables .ACT
• Adobe Color Swatches .ACO
• PaintShop Pro Palettes .PAL

• Microsoft Palettelettes .PAL

You can import the colors of a Palettepfile into a
document, or place them in the Color Gallery so they are always available. To
import a Palettepalette
file into an existing document drag the file icon from Explorer and drop it onto
the document window away from the Color Line. To import it into a new, blank
document drag the file icon from Explorer and drop it on the Color Line.

To add a Palette to the Color Gallery, open the folder into which
you installed the program, open the Palettes folder and copy the Palette file into this
folder. The file must be in one of the formats described above.

Imported colors are always named colors.

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I know all that but I guess you could say what I am suggesting is to have an editor dialogue that would let you control it all from directly with in the program, and give you features like Xpal has. And I dislike having a "palette of coloured squares floating around my document, I prefer to have a palette file in the gallery and keep my colourline uncluttered :)

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I prefer to have a palette file in the gallery and keep my colourline uncluttered

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It will be in the colour gallery under the current document name. If you uncheck 'show in colour line', there's no colourline clutter.
You can still select the colour directly from the gallery document (or any other) palette for your page objects.

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And I dislike having a "palette of coloured squares floating around my document

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If the "palette of coloured squares" is on it's own layer, hide it - then it won't annoy you.
This really is the best method from Xara, otherwise you would just end up with lots of custom colour palettes cluttering the colour gallery.

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Originally Posted by sledger

If the "palette of coloured squares" is on it's own layer, hide it - then it won't annoy you.

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until such time as you make use of the 'all layer/objects visible' feature

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It will be in the colour gallery under the current document name.... This really is the best method from Xara, otherwise you would just end up with lots of custom colour palettes cluttering the colour gallery.

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I don't think that's the point

I must say I was suprised when I first used the program that there was not a method from within of managing colour palettes [as opposed to just managing colours]

lots of custom palettes would not be a problem if there was a 'colour palette gallery', and you could pick and choose which palettes you wanted loaded from there into the colour gallery as default at session start

The Color Gallery is a Palettes Gallery and you can have chosen palettes loaded with your default document.

Select the palette(s) and use the Show in Color Line option and save as template.

I'm not trying to be difficult only explaining how to do what you are asking the program to do that it already can do.

I would like a feature where a document's named colours can be saved to a .jcw palette in the Palettes folder. There is already a stub of code for saving a palette but to my knowledge it has not been enabled with the necessary coding. I am assuming that the code from the XaraLX project regarding the loading of jcw palettes is part of the current Camelot releases.

I know you are not being difficult Bill [are you ever :)] - we were talking about different things

Its true you can save a template document... but it would be better IMO to be able to load [and remove] palettes from the colour gallery during the session and to be able to define defaults there.. remaking a template everytime you want to change this does not strike me as 'good practice'...

saving to a palette - yes agreed

Steve you do not need to save a template to have specifc palettes to be opened when you start a new document as I mentioned before. Wasn't thinking clearly, had not drank my first cup of tea. ;)

All that is required is to have the Show in Color Line enabled. When the application starts it checks to see which palettes have that property set and adds them to the Color Line.

Xara will only pick up palettes from the xara palette folder - right?

most other programs that I use will allow browsing to find palettes to load

this means that, using those programs, I only need one master copy of a defined palette in a sensible place on my system which is in a resource location not in a program folder.... I would like this to be the case with xara too

You are correct Steve. I never thought about using palettes that are not in the Xara Palettes folder.

I rarely use palettes in other apps. Photoshop, PSP, PhotoPaint are used only for manipulating photos so no actual color work is done within them, only adjustments of existing pixels.

It's ok Bill - don't think I was too clear at first - writing on the hoof as usual.... :o

What do you think about the tool: Gradient picker / sampler from Serif DrawPlus.
PDF
video: 4:30 VIDEO

I think quite a lot of members here have tried DrawPlus at some time and have felt let down by the programme. I looked at your link and yes it is a great tool to sample from a bitmap and the way it works on the logo leaf but the way you have to use it from the palette is I don't think it is what Frances meaning. The way I would like to see it developed is half way to the way that Illustrator works, not fully as Illy is too much, as the difference between swatches, colour guide and colour Panel is overtly complicated. At the moment the interface that we have is very 1990's and I agree with Frances here some development is required maybe with a simplified colour guide so that you could save and import to your colour palette or panel whatever you want to call it. Have a look if you can't remember the way Illy handles the colour palette and colour guide (it's a bit long 17 mins). http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-evan...ite-shows-how/