AVA hosts a variety to colouring techniques, from dragging and dropping colours from and to any colour chip in AVA and ColourSys, through to using colour pickers, colour files and palettes. Each method comes with its own benefits, and the one you choose is a personal preference.
Drag and drop colours
Drag and drop is a key feature of Mac® computers, and AVA and ColourSys take full advantage of this feature. Wherever you see a colour chip in AVA or ColourSys, you and drag and drop other colour chips to them.
Recolouring from a colour file
Colours can be created and stored in a colour file and then applied to designs. Using a colour file to recolour a design is particularly useful if you know the reference name of a colour.
- Double click on the first colour chip in the colourway palette. The software will automatically switch to ColourSys and will go to the closest colour in the selected colour file.
- Move around in the colour file to locate the desired colour, or type in a reference name to find a specific colour.
- Highlight a colour in the colour file and click OK. The software will automatically switch back to AVA and the layer chip will display the new colour.
Note: Certain colours selected from particular colour files may result in warning indicators appearing on your colour chips. These are designed to make you aware of important settings within the chosen colour or constraints in your profiles, such as individual transparency or resist settings or out of gamut colours. Warnings which may appear are M, P, T, R or C. For more information on gamut warnings, click here.
Recolouring using the selected colour picker
Colours are chosen from a selected colour picker to provide a bigger range of colours than a basic colour file, because colour pickers hold millions of screen colours. The brightness, hue and saturation of the colour can be changed on screen. As picker colours only have screen values, they can be linked back to a colour file for accurate colour matching to the print.
- Hold down ⌥ (option key) and click on one of the colour chips in the colourway palette. A colour picker will open. The type of picker which opens depends on what you have set in ColourSys Menu > Settings > Colour Picker. The image below shows the AVA Multiview Colour Picker:
- Move the cursor around the picker or alter the settings in the window to choose a new colour. The colours you click on in the window will update simultaneously in the design so there is no need to commit to a colour until you like its effect in the design.
To make fine adjustments to a colour, hold down the option key whilst dragging the cursor around the gamut.
- Click OK to accept the chosen colour. The new colour will be named ‘Picker’ as it has been chosen from a colour picker. If you want to save and name this colour, drag it from the colour chip in the Layer Palette to a colour file.
Colours picked with the AVA RGB picker can be fine tuned by repeating the process. Hold down ⌥ (option key) and click on the same colour chip to re-enter the colour picker and adjust your selected colour. The position of the marker in the picker is the same as it was when you previously clicked OK (which is based on the soft proofed monitor RGB values), so you are able to move it slightly to make a fine tuning adjustment to your chosen colour. Click OK and the colour will update.
Tip: if you double click on the layer chip of the new picker colour, the software will find the closest named colour in the active colour file. Click OK if the named colour is acceptable.
Recolouring from the active colour palette
The active colour file can also be accessed directly from the colour chips attached to the colourway as a palette of colours. Viewing the colour file as a palette is advantageous if you want to see all the colours in the colour file at once. It gives you an overview of all the colours available to choose from in the colour file.
- Click on the Selected Tool in the toolbar and click down on a colour chip in the colourway palette.
The colour file palette will appear for as long as the cursor is held down.
- While holding down the cursor, drag over the palette to select a colour. The chosen colour will be highlighted in the palette and the layer colour will change once the cursor is released.
When hovering over the colour file palette, a pop up reference tag will appear showing the name of the highlighted colour, as seen in the above snapshot. This tag will update for each colour as you move your cursor around the colour file palette.
Recolouring from the Swatches Palette
A very useful but inconspicuous window, the Swatches Palette can be accessed via the Layers Palette. It is designed to store a few regularly used colours, making these colour swatches very easy to access and use. The palette can be used to store the seasons trend colours, or can act as a storing place for your colour ideas. How you use it is up to you.
You do not need to save the palette as changes made to it are saved in the background, and restored on each launch of the software. You can only have one Swatches Palette, but you can adjust how many colours you store in it, up to 2500 swatches. If you want to share colour information with colleagues and customers, you need to save your colours into a colour file.
Opening the Swatches Palette
Open the Swatches Palette from the Layers Palette by clicking on the icon highlighted below:
A window similar this this will open:
Adding colours to the Swatches Palette
The first time you open the palette, it will be empty, but it is very easy to add colours to it. All of the usual colouring techniques found across AVA and ColourSys apply when using the Swatches Palette. You can drag and drop colours from virtually anywhere. You can colour by holding down ⌥ (option key) and clicking on a chip and selecting new colours from your colour picker, or you can double click to open your active colour file.
Changing the information displayed
The size of the individual colour chips in the Swatches Palette can be adjusted by dragging the bottom right corner of the window. The number of colours displayed in the Swatches Palette can also be changed by clicking on the grey triangle at the top of the palette and adjusting the number of rows and columns.
Set draw colour on click
This sets your current painting colour to the colour you click on in the Swatches Palette.
Action Menu
This lets you to clear all the chips from the palette.
You can add the colour names, Lab or CMYK information to all the chips by holding down ^ (control key) and clicking on one of the chips on the window. A tick next to any of these items in the contextual menu indicates that it is being displayed.
If the option ‘Gamut Warnings on Colour Blocks’ is ticked in the Warnings Inspector, monitor and printer gamut warnings will be displayed on all relevant colours in the Swatches Palette.