Photoshop: an usefull way to work with colored table
Every time I start creating a design I need a colored table. Sometimes I am constraint by the client, other times by logo or by the images I want to use. Many times I start creating a color table based on my instincts, on what I want to express with my design.
I will “teach” you an easy method of creating a colored table. The method is quite simple based on three main colors: the background, the main color and highlight. In a new layer, I am drawing three rectangles, being careful to keep the proportions - the rectangle for the background will be four times bigger than the other two.
The next step is to check the three colors contrast. To make this in a efficient way, I will overlap the three rectangles, like in the image below:
To see the contrast much better, I will represent the image using a gray scale. Go to the bottom of the layer window and hit the Create New Adjustment Layer button, then select Hue/Saturation and give the -100 value.
Here is the result:
If we adjust the contrast, so all the colors may be visible, we can add in the color table another colors that we want to use, but carefully to maintain the contrast.
We can save the color table in a .psd file, especially if we consider to change it. Photoshop give us a much more efficient way to save our color table. Go to Windows=>Swatches; in this layer we observe colors that can be selected by clicking in the right position. Here I will add our color. So, go to Image=>Mode=>Indexed color… and hit OK for Flatten all layers. Choose Exact option for a complete export.
Now, to save the color table in a known way for the Swatches window, select Image=>Mode=>Color Table… This option is active only when we work with an image in an Indexed Color way.
Now the color table will be saved. The extension will be .ACT.
When we want to use our color table we can load it in Swatches. Go to Swatches windows and select Replace Swatches and then chose the .act extension, like in the image below.
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