Color Palette Magic!

Although it looks deceptively like a plain old list of colors, the color palette in Hexels 2 has got a few tricks up its sleeve.

“Organize your mind, organize your life.”

While Hexels can’t tell you where you put your keys or what time dinner is, its palette can help you organize your mind.  Colors can be dragged and dropped anywhere on the palette, and even copied if you hold alt.  Or you can double-click to add the currently selected color anywhere you want.  Double-click again to edit the new color swatch.

The layout of your palette can help you keep track of what's what
The layout of your palette can help you keep track of what’s what.

 

Automatic Gradients

Drag and drop a color onto another to create gradients!
Drag and drop a color onto another to create gradients!

Do you find it somewhat tedious to carefully pick eight evenly spaced colors between salmon and magenta?  Then we have the solution for you!  Hexels allows you to create gradients right on the color palette by dropping one existing color onto another color in the same row or column.  Hexels will even create multi-color gradients that hit every color it finds along the way.

Space Travel

….Color spaces, that is.  Click the little gear icon at the lower right of the palette and you can select HSV gradients.  Behold!

The Hexels palette lets you create gradients in RGB or HSV color space.
The Hexels palette lets you create gradients in RGB or HSV color space.

Creating vertical gradients between the two takes just a few seconds and gives us a nice color selection.

Gradients can quickly populate an entire grid of colors.
Gradients can quickly populate an entire grid of colors.

Import and Export Photoshop Palettes

The heading says it all.  Hexels can import .aco palettes from Photoshop as well as export back to the format.  Hexels 2.55 even added support for importing Lab color (i.e. yellow, black, and chocolate), so all your bases should be covered.

So next time you fire up Hexels, take a new look at that plain-looking empty grid.  You could even draw a picture there!

(This is a flower and grass and a sun.)
(This is a flower and grass and a sun.)

One thought on “Color Palette Magic!”

  1. I know that this article is 4 years old, but I was wondering if there was a comprehensive hook reference guide that could be hiding somewhere?

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