BittBox » Color

Photoshop 101: Editing Indexed Color Images from the Web

Jay Hilgert — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:29:29 +0000

Have you ever plucked an image from the web and tried to edit it in Photoshop only to find annoying problems? It’s probably a .gif in Indexed color mode. For this quick example I’m using the MediaTemple ad in my sidebar, which happes to be an indexed .gif.

When trying to edit an indexed color image in Photoshop, certain adjustments are disabled, as you can see below.

The quickest way to tell what you’re dealing with is to glance at the Layers palette. You’ll see right away if it’s an indexed color image.

All you need to do in order to edit your image is simply change the color mode to RGB, and all of the annoying disabled features return.

Illustrator 101: The Annoying Grayscale Color Problem

Jay Hilgert — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:18:09 +0000

If you’ve ever run into this annoying little Illustrator problem, it can be very frustrating, but it has a simple fix. Every so often you may find that no matter what color you select, Illustrator converts your selection to grayscale…

Why? Well if you open your Color palette (Window>Color), you’ll most likley find that it’s set to grayscale. (like below)

All you have to do is set your color palette to something else, like RGB or CMYK. Now you’re good to go. Personally, I have no idea why this problem has made it all the way to CS4. If I wanted to fill a shape with a gray, I’d choose a gray.

How To: Get Mondrianum Working in Photoshop

Jay Hilgert — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:01:11 +0000

If you haven’t heard of Mondrianum yet, it’s a neat little (shareware) plugin for Photoshop (Mac only) that adds Adobe’s Kuler color combinations to the Apple color picker. It doesn’t just work in Photoshop. After installing Mondrainum, it works system-wide with any Mac app that uses the Apple color picker, like iLife, iWork, etc. Granted, most Photoshoppers probably don’t prefer the Apple color picker over Adobe’s, but if you are ever in need of a little color inspiration with the help from Kuler, it can come in handy. I’ll show you how to get it working in Photoshop.

1. Download Mondrianum and install it. (copy the folder to Applications > Photoshop > Plugins)

2. In Photoshop, go to the Preferences > General. (Command + K)

The very first option in this pane is the color picker dropdown menu. Select “Apple” then close preferences. (click OK)

3. Double click on your foreground color to bring up the color picker, and you should now see the Apple color picker instead of the Adobe picker we’re all used to.

Click on the icon at the top on the far right to bring up the Mondrianum panel.

Now to use the panel you can simply click on the swatches at the bottom, or you can export an entire set of swatches to import to any Adobe app. To do this, click on the little arrow to the right of the color combo you like, and choose “Download as Adobe Swatch Exchange file.”

Now the export/download dialogue appears. Just click “Save File” and it will be saved in the same folder that your browser download files to.

To install, find your swatch file in your downloads folder, and move it to the adobe app you want to use it in > Presets > Swatches folder. Done! now you can load the swatches from the swatches panel in your Adobe app.