Creating Custom Colour Swatches In PhotoShop CS

Custom Colour Swatches are very useful when working with designs which use specific colours, such as websets. By making a colour swatch for a webset you may be working on, you can save alot of time by having that set's complete range of colours saved in one swatch file. You will also be able to go back and use that same swatch any time you need to for further work on the webset.

Part One: Opening Preset Manager
(Skip Parts One and Two if you are making a Custom Colour Swatch by picking colours from an image )

Open your Preset Manager by going to Edit > Preset Manager:



Next, choose the Swatches option in Preset Type:





Part Two: Making a new Custom Colour Swatch from pre-existing colour swatches.
(For Custom Colour Swatches made using colours picked from an image, please skip to Part Three.)

We're going to build our first Custom Colour Swatch using one of the pre-loaded swatches which comes with PhotoShop CS.

From the flyout menu (the arrow in a circle) in the upper right corner of the Preset Manager, choose the Web Safe Colours Swatch (or any other swatch you may wish to use)



Click Okay to replace your current swatch with the Web Safe Colours swatch.



Click your mouse on the lower right hand corner of the Preset Manager window and increase the window size so that you can see all of the swatches; this makes it easier to select your new colours.



Now you're going to choose your new set of colour swatches for your project. The greyed-out buttons will become active when you choose new colours.





To select a consecutive range of colours, hold down your Shift key:



To select colours from different areas of the Web Safe Colour Swatch, hold down your Ctrl key:



Once you have all of your colours chosen, click on the Save Set button:



Please skip to Part Four: Saving your new Custom Colour Swatch Set for instructions on saving your new set.


Part Three: Making a Custom Colour Swatch by picking colours from an image

Open the image you want to pick colours from. In this example, I'm using a photo I took of a fountain at night



In your Swatches Palette, click on the flyout menu button (arrow in a circle) and select the Preset Manager:



Use Ctrl-A to select all of the colour thumbnails showing in your current Swatches Palette and click the Delete button (this will not permanently delete your current swatch).



You now have an empty Colour Swatch window. Click the Done button to close your Preset Manager.



Notice that your Swatches window in your docked palettes is also empty:



Next, click on the EyeDropper tool in your Tools Menu:



Select a colour from your image, and then click on the New Colour button located in your Swatches Palette; this will add the picked colour to your empty Swatches Palette.



Continue to pick colours until you have all of the ones you want:



Click on the flyout menu button (arrow in a circle) on your Swatches Palette and choose Save Swatches from the menu:




Part Four: Saving your new Custom Colour Swatch Set:

The pop-up save window should open automatically to your Colour Swatches folder. The illustration below shows you where to find the right folder if it doesn't appear automatically.



Now you can name your new custom colour swatch and save it for future use. Type in the new file name, ensure that you're saving the file as a Swatch with an .aco extension, and click the Save button.



Click the Done button on your Preset Manager window:



Now you will need to close and restart PhotoShop in order to see your new custom colour swatch in your swatch list:



To use your new swatch, follow the steps shown to load the original Web Safe Colours Swatch in Part Two of this tutorial.

Very nice tutorial... I didn't exactly know what the color swatch panel was for, untill now. I'll probably use these for webdesign now. :] Thanks! (5/5 stars)

You're welcome Josh; it makes life a bit easier keeping track of reds and greys