This picker is our recommended way of selecting colours in AVA, because it limits the previewed colours to the colour gamut of your printer, monitor or both. You can also limit the displayed gamut to an ICC profile. This is an ideal way of restricting the visible gamut to that of your final production gamut.
Set this as your preferred picker by going to the Coloursys Menu > Settings > Colour Picker. Click on AVA Multiview Picker. A tick will now be displayed beside this option and this will be the picker which opens when Option clicking on any colour block in AVA, or when selecting Colour Menu > Pick in Coloursys.
Entering Lab and Lch values
Lab and Lch colours can be entered directly into the picker, and small adjustments can be made by using the small nudge arrows to the side of each value.
Adjusting the lightness, saturation and hue of a colour
Lightness, saturation and hue can be altered using the horizontal sliders.
If you want to make tiny colour adjustments whilst in this window, hold down the option key as you drag the colour selector around the gamut. There is a hint at the bottom of the window reminding you of this.
Applying a transparency to a chosen colour
You can also set a transparency for any colour selected.
When a transparency has been applied to a colour from the Multiview Picker and added to a layer in the Layer Palette, we recommend saving this colour in a colour file. To do this, drag the colour from the Layer Palette to a colour file. Save the colour file. Saving colours to a colour file ensures that the exact colour can be used again in different colourways and designs.
Customising how the gamut is viewed in the picker
Click on the View icons to change how your chosen colour space is displayed in the picker.
Specifying which gamut to select colours from
Select which gamut you wish to view. This can be your monitor or printer profile (set in the AVA CMS Controller), or the gamut of an ICC Profile from your production.
In the snapshot above, both the Printer and ICC Profile options are ticked. This means the colour space is now restricted to colours achievable by both the digital printer and production (whether on an analogue or a different digital printer). If only the ICC Profile option was ticked, it would be very easy to select colours within the production gamut, but outside gamut of the digital printer. This would cause problems if you are trying to match digital sample prints to production (whether on an analogue or a different digital printer).
Setting the Delta E (dE) of your gamut
The dE slider bar in the picker window determines the accuracy of the displayed gamut. If you set this to 0.1, only the colour chips measured from the profile will be displayed, with a very small tolerance added. Any holes in the gamut will represent areas of the gamut where a measurement has not been made and our sophisticated algorithm will be used to calculate any colours selected within these blank areas.
The dE slider can be adjusted to produce a nicer looking gamut. We recommend setting this to between 1 and 3. As you increase the slider, the accuracy of the colours shown will decrease. If you set the slider to 10, the maximum it can be set to, it will make your gamut look larger but the displayed gamut will be much less accurate because you have increased the tolerance around the measured chips.
The Compare function allows you to examine any colour changes made live on screen by temporarily showing the original, allowing you to more easily work on those tiny, delicate colour adjustments.
Restrict picked colours to a colour file
Many users find a colour picker the easiest way to search for colours. However, sometimes you need to restrict the colours you pick to a particular colour file. This may be a colour file of the latest trend colours, or colours specified by a customer. To do this using the Multiview Picker, follow the steps below:
- Hold down ⌥ (option key) and click on the colour you wish to change to open the picker.
- Hold down ^ (control key) as you change the colour within the picker. This will link the colour you are selecting to the closest colour in your active colour file. If you have your Layer Palette set to show colour names, you will see the colour name change as you move around the picker.