changing colors by changing palettes

I would like to change all the colors in a drawing by changing the palette. I have attached an illustration of what I would like to do. Rich

I would like to change all the colors in a drawing by changing the palette. I have attached an illustration of what I would like to do. Rich

It seems like you already know how to do it in PhotoShop (just import a different .pal file). My version of Paint Shop Pro won't allow me to do the same thing because it automatically re-orders the palette and chooses the nearest colour to the original. Importing a .pal into Xara won't work either because the original colours aren't replaced.

The Xara solution is to draw with colours that are shades of a root colour. You then only need to change the root colour(s) to alter the entire drawing. One of the Xara movies (I forget which) demonstrates this.

I've attached my ez-Pal palette compiling program which allows you to create .pal files from a text script file. X-Pal, available in the Shareware Xone, does the same job but has a friendly graphical user interface and other features.

Regards - Sean

... would have been a really cool solution for changing the colors of the tracer tool output.

No one has yet to find away to globally change the fill colors of a trace.

Rich, let me know if you find a way! This would really give new life to the tracer tool.

Risto

risto@ristoklint.com

Visit my web site!

When the palette was changed in AS, the array changed to a new set of colors. The vectorized drawing changed, too. I am not sure what drives the order, but each time the palette was changed, the drawing and array changed. That is, I am not sure how to create a color map with an order to which I want the change to become. This was the vectorized image exported from Xara X in WMF format. So, the array was a drawing, also. Must be something about how the PAL files are created. These got a little difficult to handle, and each was exported to a bitmap. They were assembled as images. I just didn't see a way in Xara X. I noticed that removing parts of the color map would allow copy and paste into a new file and having the remaining colors. When I inserted two EPS files, and rearranged them, The order on the color line remained the same. If the maps were inserted in the reverse order, they were in inverse order on the color line. Rich

It's very easy to change the whole colour scheme with some palette-swapping plugin.

You work in rgb mode, so you're not restricted to a limited set of colours.

Some of the most useful plugins for this:

swap color series (3 freeware plugins) by http://www.flamingpear.com

unplugged colors (freeware, http://www.v-d-l.com/up_preview_colors.html)

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Joan M. Mas
TypePhases: Dingbats and Fonts for yer computor!
http://inicia.es/de/jmas
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I tried all kinds of stuff a couple of months ago... and yet more now, with palettes... and nothing. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

If I could go in to the name gallery and select all shapes with a specific color (or color range) in a trace... I would be in heaven! I would consider sacrificing some of my body parts to the Xara Gods to have this implemented.

Joan, thanks for the tip! I will play around with it... but unfortunately it would not help with the Xara Name Gallery.

Risto

risto@ristoklint.com

Visit my web site!

I have been trying to discover the AS loading sequence. I can change vector colors globally, but haven't been able to load the palette to an order to match colors. I took a 6X6 matrix and compared it with the loaded palette. I found that the palette was loaded from the matrix bottom up, and to the palette top down. Duplicate colors are skipped. I had created a map by selecting colors from a traced image. There were a few duplicates. I will create another palette, and see if I can control the replacement colors. It appears that changing colors by invoking an new palette requires the initial position to be refilled. If the position is not filled, the color changes to black. So, I need to make the new palette at least as large as the beginning palette. Rich

I was able to rearrange the colors and change the order. I had to export the file to WMF from Xara X for it to work. I then made a single column, and made a copy. Then I was able to change corresponding colors in the second column. Each was exported to WMF, loaded, and the palette saved. Changing palettes changed colors accordingly. Rich

I was able to create a box matrix, and fill to a new order and save to WMF in AS. When I read the file back in, the palette was sorted in accordance with the file. I then read the PAL file into Word, created a test to table, sorted the listing, saved in txt, changed the extension to PAL, and opened the rearranged palette file.
I was also able to edit the palette to new colors, and have the new colors changed to the drawing.

I tried a similar thing with the Xara X PAL. Read the file into word, converted the text to a table, sorted , and saved in text format. Thengave the txt file a PAL extension. Opened the file in Xara X with the sorted palette. I also loaded the PAL into XPal and exported to EPS, and opened that file to the new palette order.

Rich