Quickly adding colours to a document

**Daniel** · 11 July 2007, 08:25 AM

I don't like to say "no, no good" to changes to established functions or processes so I've sat on this for a while, but it's still bugging me.

I'm trying to get to grips with XXP 3.2's new colour handling, that there are no named colours by default. I know that I can turn the feature off and go back to how it was but I like the idea of keeping documents clean in the spirit of the change. I am finding creating named colours too slow, though.

In the olden days I'd use the standard named colours (Red, Blue etc) to knock up a quick document, and then make global changes to the colour of the document by using the Name gallery to select all the red items, or editing the colour 'Red' to be a different colour (yes, then it's name is wrong, but all the red items change colour at the same time).

Short of making used palette colours automatically become named colours to let me continue, I think there is a quicker way: at the moment I have to open the Colour Editor and then create a new named colour. Could this be added to the context sensitive right-click menu when right clicking on a palette colour? It would speed up my workflow.

**stlewis** · 11 July 2007, 01:19 PM

Hi

What I have done in the past is change the default template - so add a series of named colours 1, 2, 3 etc. Or 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b, 2c etc (where b and c are variations of a).

This also gets away from 'red' when it is pink!

**I've added a sample

**Josie** · 11 July 2007, 01:40 PM

To keep the document clean, Macromedia FreeHand includes menu command Delete unused colors. This really makes sense after the design is done so such command could be useful in Xara as well.

**Odat** · 11 July 2007, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by Josie

To keep the document clean, Macromedia FreeHand includes menu command Delete unused colors. This really makes sense after the design is done so such command could be useful in Xara as well.

You can do that from the Color Gallery. If you select colors and hit delete, it asks you if you want to delete all of the selected colors, or just the colors that are not currently in use.

I would be neat if that was in a menu somewhere though, as you mentioned. Since the color bar has menu functionality of it's own, it could possibly be added there.

**Soquili** · 11 July 2007, 07:00 PM

Xtreme Pro 3.2 has delete unused colors in the View Options.

**Josie** · 12 July 2007, 06:00 AM

If you select colors and hit delete, it asks you if you want to delete all of the selected colors, or just the colors that are not currently in use.

This does not seem to work always as expected. In some cases, certain colors are not in the Name Gallery but still appear in the Color Gallery and the Delete command warns that they are used in the document when they are not. A bug?

Xtreme Pro 3.2 has delete unused colors in the View Options.

I know that. But that's a global option, not document-specific.

**amoore** · 12 July 2007, 05:13 PM

Originally Posted by Josie

I know that. But that's a global option, not document-specific.

True, but the Options palette is readily accessible, so you can turn the option on and off without too much trouble.

**Josie** · 12 July 2007, 10:02 PM

Well, if you prefer it turned off most of the time, then in specific document you have to turn the option on, close the document to clean the colors, and then NOT FORGET to turn it off again. So it can be quite a trouble :-)

**amoore** · 13 July 2007, 07:17 PM

Yes, of course.

But that's true with other options and system behaviors, too. For example, the new bitmap-replace default. It's wonderful if I happen to need Xtreme to work like that. Most of the time, I don't. So now, I have to make an extra effort to do my normal work.

I expect we'll run into many more of these things as Xtreme becomes more complex.