Colors, Patterns and Gradients
In this lesson, we will be going over the materials palette in detail, including the color picker, the patterns, textures and gradients.
Color Picker
Frame View
|
 Rainbow View |
 Swatches |
Notice on the top of the color picker there are three tabs. Two are for different variations of the color picker and one is for your swatches. Either the frame view or the rainbow view will give you the same results, and it is your preference what you would like to use.
If you left click anywhere on the color picker, that will select your foreground color. Right click, and your background color will be selected.
For the swatches, you can save any color or texture or gradient, or combination of them and save them as a swatch for use in either your current project, or a future project. You can also edit or delete any of your swatches.
Do you remember the Pattern, Gradient and Color symbols that we saw on the materials palette?If the solid color is selected, and you click in the center of either the foreground or background boxes, the materials properties box will pop up (shown on the left).You see here four different sections in which you can change your color. On the top is the color picker again. You can click anywhere in the round circle to get into the color family that you want to use, and then select either lighter or darker or variations of that color in the box in the middle of the circle.You may also select any of the preset colors on the grid below the color selector, and that color will then be selected.You can also enter the RGB values or the HSL values for a color, or the html value. The html value is particularly helpful if you are going to use it on a web page or a background color.If you want to select a color from an image that you are working on, and have it open on your workspace, you can click on that color on your image while the material properties box is open on the color tab, and your color will be selected.
Gradients
You can change the sliding markers to alter the way that the gradient looks, as well as change the foreground and background colors and the opacity. You can then save it for future use. Click “Copy”, give the gradient a name, and click OK.
You can also export your gradients to use in other programs.
Under the gradient tab of the Materials Properties box, you will see a large box with the current gradient showing, and when you click on the small arrow on the right, you will see all of the gradients that you currently have saved, which you can select from.You have the option to change the angle, how many times that the gradient repeats, and whether to invert it or not by the check box.
Under the gradient box, you will see four other options to change the style. You can make your gradient linear, rectangular, sunburst, or radial. On all of these except for linear, you can change the horizontal and vertical positions and the focal point.
Under the gradient box, you will see a button that says “Edit”. You can use the edit function in order to change a gradient that you already have, or to create one of your own and save it. When you click on this button, you will see this:
Patterns
- One thing to remember is that Patterns can only be used on an image that has 16 million colors, or a grey scale image. If you want to increase the colors in any image, just go to image/increase color depth and choose 16 million colors.
Select your pattern by clicking on the small arrow on the pattern box, and then you can change the angle and scale.
You can use any seamless tile in your patterns to use on your projects. In former versions of Paint Shop Pro, the patterns had to be in the form of a bmp, but now you can use any image. Just save it to your Patterns folder.
Textures
One other thing to note is the check box for the Textures on the top of the Material Properties box. When this is checked, then you have the option to add a texture to anything in the Materials Properties, including your solid colors, patterns or gradients. Uncheck the box, and no texture will be added.
