Naming Colors Effect on Color Palette

I was trying to learn about naming colors. I named a color, only to find it was now in my default color palette, which was now “Untitled1”. I did not want to have the default palette that opens on the Color Line when I open the program changed and requiring me to rename it every time I named a color. I tried to undo my actions but had only partial success. The new named color is gone, but the color palette is still “Untitled1”, and I have no idea how to restore the palette name. How can I correct this?

Lynn
(Gender: Male)

Hi Lynn

Welcome to the Forum :)

"Untitled1" is the name of document you're working on (because you haven't saved it yet). Your standard palette is called "Standard Palette".

To see the available palettes, you can press F9 to display the Color Gallery (or click Utilities | Galleries | Color Gallery). When the gallery opens, you'll see that Untitled1 is at the top of the list. Any named colors you've defined in that document will be shown under it. Near the bottom of the list, you'll see "Standard Palette". It's not easy to change the standard palette accidentally.

Allison

I can see I am going to have to give more information before anyone can understand my problem. By the way, I am brand new to Xara; I took advantage of the Magix Silver free offer this month. I then bought Gary Bouton's book, Xara Xtreme, The Official Guide, and saved his Color Palette as a Template, making it the default. However, when I named a color and saved it, it changed the name of this default template Color Palette to Untitled1 and added the new named color to it. I deleted the named color but don't know how to change the name of my default template from Untitled 1 back to Color Palette.

I really would like to learn how to save a named color without it messing up my default color palette. I took advantage of the sale that ended yesterday to order the latest version, and I want to be sure I understand how to save named colors without having my color palette screwed up before I try saving any named colors after I install the new version.

Lynn

I assume here the question is how to save a named color in the program generally, so not only setting it for a certain document? You would like to have the saved colors at each start of Xara program?

Lynn, you're going to have to work harder than that to mess up your default template. :)

When you open Xara, it opens to an unsaved document called "Untitled1" that is based on your default template. If it helps, you can think of it as a copy of your default template. Any changes you make, including named colors, are part of the document called "Untitled1" -unless- you explicitly save the document with the name of your default template by clicking File | Save Template and mark the "Use as default template" checkbox on the right.

Also, you can look in the File | New submenu at the list of available templates to see if Color Palette is still there.

Also, unless you explicitly edit your Standard Palette in the Color gallery, or save a named color in the template and unmark the Delete Unused Color checkbox (Utilities | Options | View tab), your standard palette won't change.

It's not always easy to wrap your head around the way a new app works.

go to the colour gallery and look at what palettes are listed you should see:

a palette for each document that is open with the same name as the document it refers to
a palette named 'Standard Palette'
a palette named 'Web Browser Colours'
any additional palettes you have loaded such as Gary's Color Palette

you can switch any of these in and out of the colour line by right clicking on their name in the colour gallery and ticking/unticking 'Show in Colour Line'

when you create a named colour in the program it is added to the palette that bears the program name - not to any other palette

when you save a template make sure only the palettes you want in the colour line are ticked

however note: if you choose to untick the palette with the document name no named colours that you create will show up in the colour line

hope that helps

Quote:

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Originally Posted by csehz

I assume here the question is how to save a named color in the program generally, so not only setting it for a certain document? You would like to have the saved colors at each start of Xara program?

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possibly - that means

making up a palette
or
including the colours somewhere in the template document locked and hidden so they show up in the template document palette when it is loaded at program start up

Thank you for all of your responses. I wish I could work through them right now and hopefully increase my understanding of how named colors work, but I will have to wait until after I return home later today to do so.

I think what I'd really like to do is save all named colors to a new palette that contains only named colors. They would thus be available when I chose that ""named colors palette" but would not clutter up any of the other palettes.

Lynn

you are not really undersatnding what 'named colour' means in xara I think

all palettes contain 'named colours' and only 'named colours', because 'named colours' are colours that have been given a name, and all colours in all palettes must have names

so any palette you make will by definition be a palette of 'named colours'.....


EDIT - do not confuse the colour bar with palettes - they are not the same thing - the colour bar is just a 'short cut' of available colours, some of which may be named and in a palette [rectangular on the bar], and some of which are not [diamond shaped on the bar] - which saves you defining every colour from scratch in the colour editor

you cannot clutter up palettes from within xara - only add to the palette that bears the file name

Thank you for explaining that the "Untitled1" is what appears when I open a new document. And yes, it is the color palette I saved as the default template. What I have been reading about named colors stresses that if you save the colors you have used in, say, coloring a car, then you can change the hue only and save with a new name and easily change the color of the car. Oversimplified, I know. But if I understand correctly, these colors that you name to color a car show up only on the color bar of that specific car document when you save it as a .xar. So when you open another new document, it will show only the original colors that you saved as a template; the colors you named in your previous document for coloring the car and that you saved as a .xar don't show since they are limited to the document they were saved in. Am I on the right track now? And yes, colors in Xara are handled completely differently than in the software I am familiar with. It does make for a learning curve.

Lynn

Yes, I think you're on the right track.

Also note that, AFAIK, to work the way you're talking about with the car colors, the named colors have to be "shades" of the given hue or base color.

That's why I warned that I was oversimplifying! (Re the "shades".)

I am thinking that saving named colors is like saving a brush in Xara. You don't save to a brush folder, you save to a document. Then, to use the brush, you open that document. (I have made one brush in Xara, and I had a black outline on the shapes in it. When I drew with the brush, the black outlines showed, but if I released the stroke, the outlines disappeared. I got around this by doing a screen shot of the stroke before releasing it. Worked, but I had to get rid of the resulting white background before I could use the stroke. Of course, I had not read carefully enough, and didn't save the document with the new brush stroke. I'll know better next time!)

Lynn