Adobe Photoshop quick color reduction trick can be used in textile design

The Marquee Trick
This is a fast trick to color reduce a textile design (convert from RGB color mode to indexed color) in Adobe Photoshop. There are many ways to color reduce a textile design. This one is not as accurate as other methods mentioned in the book however it's fast & simple and in textile design alot of times speed is what you need. The following is an except from my book "Adobe Photoshop for Textile design" by Frederick L Chipkin. In the excercise it mentions to open the design ditsy from the enclosed CD. Note: since you don't have the CD you will have to find your own image. Just scan in a textile design (make sure it's in RGB color mode) and try to get the concept


This technique takes judgement and trial and error to get it right. It’s another way to color reduce your design down to indexed color. It’s not as accurate as the previous technique however it’s essential that you have it as an option.

In a perfect world you wouldn’t need any complicated steps to reduce a design down to indexed color. You’d simply go to Image → Mode → Indexed Color → Local (Adaptive) and Voila’! Your design would be color reduced.
But sadly this usually never works. The reason for this is that PhotoShop will take an average of all your colors and reduce your design down to the most common colors found in it.
For example: If you were working on a design that consisted of small multicolored flowers that were very spaced on a solid blue ground. Then went to Image → Mode → Indexed Color → Local (Adaptive) → OK, then your design would color reduce down to mostly colors from the ground and you would loose most of the flower colors.

Try this out for yourself. Open the design Ditsy from the enclosed CD. While color reducing the design down to indexed color make sure that the Palette is set to Local (Adaptive) and choose 16 for the Colors. After the design has been color reduced you will have an image that has your flower and leaf colors plus quite a few shades of blue. It might even be all blue.

And now for the trick!
Try the same thing again except this time place a Marquee over one of the flower motifs along with a little bit of the ground color and then reduce it down to indexed color ( Image → Mode → Indexed Color → Local (Adaptive) → OK).
PhotoShop will average your colors and reduce your design down to the most common colors found in the Marquee box. Try it. You’ll like it!

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