Color Tool

Color Tool lets you choose a color palette for your image or data. It also lets you create new palettes. Since Webwinds displays each data point within a range of 256 discrete values, 256 colors need to be assigned to those values. These are drawn in a rectangular array of color chips, as shown above. The chips are arranged in order from lowest to highest left to right, bottom to top. So, the lower left corner is value zero, and the upper right is value 255.

Color Tool can be connected to other objects in 2 ways: drops it into another object. If you drop it into a data object or any other data source, the color change will propagate the palette to any other objects that use its data. This is a one time activity so if you change something, it will not propagate to the connected objects. If you use the button, changes made to the ColorTool will propagate. Note that if you wish to make your own colors, you will have to have to create a new palette first. Use the New button to make new color palettes.

To the right of the color array are two large swatches. Those are labeled with the pixel number to which they applies. If you click the mouse on any of the small color chips, the chip will be highlighted, and the right color swatch will be filled with that color. If one clicks a subsequent time on the small chips, the right swatch's contents will move to the left swatch and the new choice appears in the right swatch.

Controls

Buttons

The Prev and Next buttons cycle through the list of system palettes.

The Save button saves a copy of all the current palettes into a file called colors.save. Move that to your colors.dat file in order to effect the changes permanently. The color palette file is a simple text file. So, you can edit it with your favorite editor.

The Ramp button changes all the entries between the two highlighted color chips. It linearly interpolates either in RGB space or HSV space. (See Menu below for more details.) Either scheme might be helpful.

The Send button is used to communicate changes to linked objects.

The New button creates a new color palette. It copies the palette you are currently viewing, and gives the copy a unique name. Note that ColorTool can only modify new color palettes. Although you can play with the color sliders at any time, only new palettes record the changes, whereas built-in palettes revert to their original colors as soon as you try to use any of them. Remember to hit Save if you want to save your new palettes.

The first two menu items allow one to treat the sliders and interpolation as being in RGB mode or in HSV mode. RGB mean "red, green, blue," so the top slider controls how much red is in the current color, the middle slider controls green, and the bottom slider controls blue. HSV mode means "hue, saturation, value," in which case, the top slider controls hue, that is, which color to use. The middle slider control saturation, which is the shade of that color. Low saturation is white or grey; high saturation is full color. The bottom slider controls value, which is how bright or dim the color is. Zero value is black.

The menu also allows one to reverse the order of the color table. All reserved values stay the same, but the others are reversed top to bottom.

Slider

The sliders can be used to change the color at the most recently selected location. See the Menu section for details on how they work.

Applications to Connect to This Application

None.

Applications to Connect This Application to

Color Tool can be dropped into any object that uses or has associated with it a color palette. That includes data objects.

Tricks and Gotchas

WebWinds Home / Oct 5, 2001