Introduction
Visual Colour Selector
Visual Colour Selector allows you to:
Visually preview colours from 8 built-in colour definition (palette) files, including the predefined colours of CSS3
recognised by a wide range of browsers, the X11 colours (a set of 502 distinct color values with some used as the basis for the CSS colours),
the wxColourDatabase colour database from wxWidgets (a cross-platform C++ graphical user interface software library),
and two third-party palettes designed with suitability for colour-blind people in mind. Users can also add their own palette files
using a simple text format and open palette/swatch files in various formats used by other applications.
Copy colour names and RGB values in decimal or hex format to the clipboard for use in coding, web design etc.
Select a subset of colours from any number of colour definition files as a custom selected palette.
Filter the selected palette to get a palette of colours optimised for visual colour separation using CIE delta-E colour separation standards.
Generate palettes from random colours with user-specified ranges of hue, saturation and value/luminance in HSV or HSL colour space,
optimised for colour separation using CIE delta-E colour separation standards.
Save generated palettes in X11, JASC PAL, ACO, ASE and GIMP file formats.
Open palette files in X11, JASC PAL, ACO, ASE and GIMP file formats.
View colours simulated as seen by people with colour deficiencies (protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia) and generate
optimised palettes accounting for colour deficiencies.
Evaluate contrast between light and dark colours in a filtered palette according to WCAG 2.0 (ISO/IEC 40500:2012) criteria, with the option
to evaluate the contrast accounting for colour deficiencies. WCAG accessibility is increasingly a requirement for government websites,
e.g. US Section 508 federal websites and digital content, the Canadian Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA),
UK government Digital Service Standard, EU commission websites, Australian Disability Discrimination Act,
Hong Kong government websites, Indian government websites, etc.
Preview your image files, including simulation of colour deficiencies.
Visual Colour Selector Version 1.2 is provided as freeware with no registration requirements and no feature limitations.
See also Licensing and
Updates and free licensing for old versions.
Contents
Installation
Windows Installation
Visual Colour Selector is supported on Windows operating systems Windows 7 and later versions, and has been tested on
Windows 7 and Windows 10. Previous versions were also tested on Windows Server 2008 R2, and should continue to work on server
versions of Windows related to Windows 7 and above.
Visual Colour Selector is normally installed by running the installer "Install_VisColSel120_32_All", which may be packaged inside a zip file for distribution.
The 64 bit version is installed by "Install_VisColSel120_64_All.exe".
The 32 bit version will run on 32 bit and 64 bit Windows. The 64 bit version will run only on 64 bit Windows.
Run the installer normally (do not start it by running "as administrator"). Windows will display a User Account Control dialog to ask
if you want to allow the program to make changes on your computer. You will need to allow this to get installation rights. Click Yes to proceed.
If VisColSel is already installed, a dialog will be shown to explain that a previous installation or both 32 and 64 bit installations were detected
advising you to uninstall the previous version first. You can click OK to continue to install over the top or side by side with the other architecture if you
wish, but a clean install is recommended.
The installer will show a Welcome page which recommends that you close all other applications,
although this is not normally essential. The installer abbreviates "Visual Colour Selector" as "VisColSel".
Clicking Next takes you to the Licence Agreement page. All licence details, including third-party licences, will be available in the
installation directory after installation.
After you click I Agree, the installer takes you to "Choose Install Location". You can change the destination folder here, but it
is normally best to use the default, e.g. C:\Program Files\CJS VisColSel64. The installation will be
available to all users who log on to the computer.
Clicking Next takes you to the Start menu options page, where you can choose to add a Start menu shortcut or not - the selection is
made by a checkbox, which is checked by default.
Clicking Install then starts the installation process. If you are installing without having uninstalled first and you are
running VisColSel in the matching architecture , an error dialog will be shown "Error opening file for writing"
as the installer cannot overwrite the executable file. If this happens, abort and uninstall the previous version.
When installation is complete, clicking Next displays a page that is titled "Completing VisColSel Setup". This includes a checkbox to
run Visual Colour Selector, which you can check if you want to run Visual Colour Selector immediately. No checkbox to create a desktop shortcut
is provided in line with Microsoft recommendations to avoid desktop clutter.
You can then click Finish to close the installer. If you don't run Visual Colour Selector from the installer, you can start it from
the Start Menu or directly from the install location, e.g. C:\Program Files\CJS VisColSel64\VisColSel.exe
or C:\Program Files (x86)\CJS VisColSel32\VisColSel.exe.
Linux and macOS builds are no longer available as the author has had zero feedback from any users using these systems,
and a great deal of effort is required to update the builds for new systems and set up virtual machines to test on.
You can still use the previous version though, and request a free licence key.
Uninstallation
Windows
Close the app first if it is running (click the system close [X] icon, select from the menu File/Quit, or type Alt-F4 when the app has focus).
It's recommended that you uninstall any previous installation before upgrading to a new version. If you are changing from a 32 bit
to a 64 bit version, or vice-versa, the other version should be uninstalled.
To uninstall a previous version, open Programs and Features by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel,
clicking Programs, and then clicking Programs and Features.
Find VisColSel in the list, right click the entry (In Windows 10, left click the entry) and then click Uninstall.
Alternatively in Windows 10, open the Start menu, click Settings, click System, select Apps & features, find VisColSel in the list,
left click the entry and then click Uninstall.
You can also type 'add' into the Start menu search box and select 'Add or remove programs', then uninstall VisColSel from the list as above.
Running
Windows
After you have installed the application it should be available through the normal APIs, e.g. Start menu and desktop shortcut.
The application displays a main control panel and a default palette file - for more information continue to the "Instructions for Use" section.
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Instructions for Use
Visual Colour Selector has a main control panel, and can open any number of palette files in separate windows.
The built-in colour database for the wxWidgets library is opened by default; CSS3, X11 and several other palette files are also built in
and can be opened separately.
Users can see the named colours and right click to copy the name or get the RGB values in decimal or hex to the clipboard.
Getting Started Page
When Visual Colour Selector is run for the first time, a "Get Started" page is shown on the main window, containing a brief
summary of the features available and how to access them. This page may be dismissed by clicking on the "Don't show this page"
checkbox, and restored by selecting the main menu "View/Show Get started page" command.
Selecting colours
Visual Colour Selector opens a colour definition file for the wxWidgets wxColourDatabase colours by default.
The first comment header line from the file is shown above the colour table.
The original colour is shown under "Colour". The "Lib Name" column shows the colour name.
If the same RGB combination is listed under different names or aliases, these will be combined on the same row.
The P column shows the appearance of the colour in the "Colour" column
simulated for protanopia colour deficiency. The D column shows the appearance of the colour in the "Colour" column
simulated for deuteranopia colour deficiency. The T column shows the appearance of the colour in the "Colour" column
simulated for tritanopia colour deficiency.
Left clicking on a row causes the RGB values for the row to be shown in the status bar.
To get more data, right click on a row in the Colour Definition File window. The popup menu enables you
to copy the colour name to the clipboard, or the RGB values in decimal or hex format. There are also
options to copy the RGB values of the colour deficiency simulations to the clipboard.
To select colours from a Colour Definition File window to add to the selected palette,
click "Select all" or individual row checkboxes under "Sel".
To open other colour definition files in a new window, use File/Open built-in Palette File,
or File/Open Palette File in the Visual Colour Selector window, when the main Visual Colour Selector window has the focus.
Using File/Open built-in Palette File when a Colour Definition File window has the focus will replace its palette with the new file.
By default it opens the subdirectory of the installed location with the name \Palettes.
File/Open built-in Palette File opens files installed with the app in the default format.
File/Open Palette File opens files in a variety of optional file formats, which you select first from a list.
- X11 style plain text file (this format is used for the built-in palette files)
- JASC Palette (.pal) file format
- Photoshop Color Swatch (.aco) format
- Adobe Swatch Exchange File (.ase)
- GIMP Palette (.gpl) file
Visual Colour Selector is installed with example palettes in each of these formats, other
than the application's default plain text X11 format which is available as built-in palettes.
The File/Open Palette File dialog will open the subdirectory of the installed location
with the name \ExamplePalettes, which contains subdirectories ACO, ASE, GPL and PAL
containing sample palettes for the relevant format.
The "Selected" tab in the Visual Colour Selector window combines all selected colours from all Colour Definition File windows.
The "Colour", "Lib name", "P", "D" and "T" columns perform similar functions to those in the Colour Definition File window.
Checking a row in the "Fix" column forces that colour to be included in any filtering.
Right click/Show palette report to get a list of the palette colours and RGB values and the average luminance.
The palette report dialog allows you to copy the report to the clipboard, or save it as a file.
This option is available on the "Selected", "Filtered", "Light" and "Dark" pages.
The right click menu on the selected and other palette tabs in the main window gives you the same commands to copy colour name and RGB values as for the colour definition window,
as well as options to edit the row, show a palette report, and save a palette file containing the colours in the palette, in various formats.
When editing a row of the selected palette, note that this will only take effect on the filtered and light/dark palettes if done before you run the filter.
When saving a palette file, a dialog will appear to ask you to select the file format. For X11 and GIMP formats you can enter
a descriptive comment for the palette, which will be included as a comment line or palette name respectively.
For ACO and ASE formats you can also select the colour space to be used; this defaults to RGB but additional options are available:
- RGB
- HSB (ACO format only)
- CMYK
- Lab
- Grey scale
- Wide CMYK (ACO format only)
A "Save As" file dialog will then appear to allow you to save the file under a name of your choice.
This option is available on the "Selected" as well as the "Filtered", "Light" and "Dark" pages.
Filtering and optimising colours
To filter the selected palette, click the Filter tab in the Visual Colour Selector window.
Filter/All allows you to copy the selected palette to the filtered palette.
Filter/Optimiser allows you to generate filtered palettes optimised for colour separation.
The "No. of colours to generate" spin control specifies the number of colours to be selected as optimum for the filtered palette
out of the source. The "Source" radio button selects either colours from the Selected palette, or one of two random generation options.
When the Source radio button is on "Selected palette", the optimiser will find a subset of colours from the
selected palette that maximises the colour separation between each colour. This uses the CIE Delta-E standard
to calculate the colour separations that result in perceptually uniform differences between colours. You
can select the original 1976 standard CIE76 (about 75% accurate in representing visual perception of
colour difference) or the improved 1994 standard CIE94, said to be about 95% accurate relative to human colour perception.
The CIEDE2000 standard is further refined.
The Colour Spacing radio buttons specify which type of colour perception should be taken into account
when calculating colour separation. The "Normal" checkbox includes normal colour vision, but you can unselect it and
select one of the colour deficiency checkboxes if you want to see the result of an optimised palette for a colour deficient person.
You can check multiple checkboxes here - checking them all will optimise colour separations to find the set of
colours with the best colour separations taking into account each type of colour vision.
The optimiser requires a selected palette of at least twice as many colours as the number of colours specified to generate.
The larger this ratio, the better the result in the filtered palette.
Filter/Optimiser can also generate optimised palettes from random colours.
The randomly generated colour options for "Source" create a large number of random colours using the Isaac random number generator,
which creates a fine-grained selection of colours in HSV (hue, saturation, and value) or HSL (hue, saturation, and luminosity) colour space.
Using random RGB values is generally unsatisfactory, whereas limiting brightness and saturation in HSV or HSL colour space produces
more aesthetically pleasing colours. Different limiting settings for Sat and Val, or Sat and Lum, give you control
of lighter or darker ranges of colours to be generated separately for "foreground"
and "background" colours. You can also restrict the range of colour hues by changing the Hue settings.
The range settings are set to default values initially.
Under the Foreground and Background controls are shown their respective preview bars, which contain a set of colours randomly generated according to
the HSV or HSL settings. When the "Generate filtered palette" button is clicked, the optimiser selects the subset of colours from the
selected palette or random source that optimises perceptual colour separation between the generated colours. These may be seen
in the Filtered palette.
The Reset button at the top left of the colour range settings will reset the current settings (i.e. either HSV or HSL, depending on which is
selected) to their defaults.
The Filtered palette tab in the Visual Colour Selector window shows filtered/optimised results.
The original colour is shown under "Colour".
The next column is headed "Lib Name" or "Nearest to (dE units)"
according to the Source setting in the Filter/Optimiser tab. If the colours were filtered from the Selected palette
this column shows the original library name. If the colours were filtered
from randomly generated colours, the nearest colour from the named colours of the CSS
standard is shown, followed by the Delta-E difference from that colour in brackets,
calculated using the CIEDE2000 standard.
The P column shows the appearance of the colour in the "Colour" column
simulated for protanopia colour deficiency. The D column shows the appearance of the colour in the "Colour" column
simulated for deuteranopia colour deficiency. The T column shows the appearance of the colour in the "Colour" column
simulated for tritanopia colour deficiency.
Right click/Show palette report to get a list of the filtered palette and RGB values. The palette report dialog
allows you to copy the report to the clipboard, or save it as a file. This option is available on the "Selected"
as well as the "Filtered" pages. The following text shows an example of the palette report format:
Data for original colours:
Average luminance for palette: 0.346861
Selected colour palette:
0 0 0 BLACK
142 35 35 FIREBRICK
255 0 0 RED
255 228 225 misty rose, MistyRose, MistyRose1
255 160 122 light salmon, LightSalmon, LightSalmon1
255 185 15 DarkGoldenrod1
139 101 8 DarkGoldenrod4
...
The right click menu on the filtered palette tab, as for the selected palette, gives you commands to copy colour name and RGB values,
an option to edit the row, show a palette report, and save a palette file in various formats.
If you edit a row of the filtered palette, this will also change what is displayed on the contrast, light and dark tabs. If you use a filter
e.g. to copy or optimise the selected palette, any edited colours in the filtered palette will be replaced, so if you want to use this facility
you should save the palette to a file.
Saving a palette in X11 plain text file format (this is used for the built-in palette files, and originated
in the X Window System). You can specify a descriptive comment for the palette.
Saving a palette in JASC PAL format (originally used by Jasc Software in PaintShop Pro).
Saving a palette in Adobe colour swatch format (originating in Adobe image editing software).
Saving a palette in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) format (originating in Adobe image editing software). There are
radio button options for specifying the colour space.
Saving a palette in GIMP Palette (GPL) format (originating in Adobe image editing software).
You can save a name for the palette.
The "Columns" line in the header is not used for reading or saving.
The standard format of the file is as follows:
First line:
"GIMP Palette"
2nd line:
"Name: <palette name>"
3rd line (optional):
"Columns: 0" (number of columns to be used to display palette in app)
3rd/4th line:
"#"
Subsequent lines:
"255 0 0 Red"
- Numbers are formatted fixed width e.g. 3 digits each, followed by an optional colour name spaced by one tab
Evaluating colour contrast
Click the Contrast evaluation tab in the Visual Colour Selector window to review contrast between filtered palette colours.
This page has a grid-style display showing colours darker than the average luminance on the left (rows), and lighter than the
average luminance along the top (columns), with the contrast between the two colours shown graphically in the intersecting
cells, including a number for the contrast according to WCAG 2.0 (ISO/IEC 40500:2012) criteria, and a yellow X overlay if the contrast is below
the set level threshold.
The CB simulation radio buttons select whether colours are shown as normal or using the specified colour deficiency simulation,
labelled 'P' for protanopia, 'D' for deuteranopia, and 'T' for tritanopia simulation.
The contrast level threshold can be selected by the contrast level drop-down choice control to be the
4.5:1 WCAG 2.0 relaxed ratio - level AA, the 7:1 WCAG 2.0 enhanced ratio - level AAA, or a custom level which is set using
the spin control to the right.
The "Lum. Sort" checkbox controls how the table is sorted by average luminance. When the checkbox labelled "Incl. CB sim"
is checked, the average luminance of the specified colour deficiency simulation is used to split the colours between rows and columns,
otherwise the average luminance of the normal colours is used.
WCAG 2.0 requires that:
LEVEL AA:
The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following:
Large Text: Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1;
LEVEL AAA (Enhanced):
The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 7:1, except for the following:
Large Text: Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1;
LEVEL AA and AAA:
Incidental: Text or images of text that are part of an inactive user interface component, that are pure decoration, that are not visible to anyone,
or that are part of a picture that contains significant other visual content, have no contrast requirement.
Logotypes: Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no minimum contrast requirement.
Left click on a Contrast evaluation table cell to select it - this will show the foreground and background colour RGB values
in the status bar. You can use the arrow, Home, End, Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End, Page Up, and Page Down keys to navigate around the table.
Right click on a Contrast evaluation table cell for more information. You can copy the foreground and background RGB colours
to the clipboard in decimal or hex format. You can get a colour pair report which gives the
average luminance for all colours in the palette, the contrast ratio, and foreground and background RGB colours for
the original colours as well as the colour deficiency simulations.
You can also get a report for the whole colour palette, which gives the average luminance for original colours and colour deficiency simulations,
and lists colour pairs that have contrast above the selected threshold for normal and colour deficiency simulations,
quoting the colour RGB values, colour name, and contrast values for normal, protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia simulations.
If there are a large number of colour pairs, the report dialog will not show, but you can save the report to a file instead.
Light and Dark palettes
To the right of the "Contrast" tabs, the colours that are above the average luminance are shown in a palette list on the "Light" tab,
while the colours that are below the average luminance are shown in a palette list on the "Dark" tab, and these lists have the
same right-click options as the "Selected" and "Filtered" lists, allowing you to copy colour names and RGB values, generate reports,
edit row colour and name, and save the list in various file formats.
Image Preview
To preview an image in one of the common formats such as BMP, PNG or JPEG, use File/View an Image File in the Visual Colour Selector window.
In the Image Preview window, the header has CB simulation radio buttons to select whether colours are shown as normal or using
the specified colour deficiency simulation, labelled 'P' for protanopia, 'D' for deuteranopia, and 'T' for tritanopia simulation,
and zoom in/out buttons with a "100%" button to reset the zoom and image position.
The File menu supports the same zoom controls via menu commands, plus "Save As" to save the image in various formats
(BMP, PNG, JPEG, PCX, XPM, ICO and CUR)
and "Exit" to close the window. You can left click on the image to drag it with the mouse, and also zoom in and out using
the mousewheel.
Preview for protanopia simulation:
Preview for deuteranopia simulation:
Preview for tritanopia simulation:
Auto-Save
The "Selected", "Filtered", "Light" and "Dark" palettes are saved (as user application data, in the %APPDATA% location shown in the About dialog as "User's default palette files"),
as well as the optimiser settings (in the registry or configuration file
depending on the OS), and (except for "Selected") are read back in when the app is re-started. This ensures that you won't lose working data when you close the app, or in the event of a crash,
and you don't have to remember to save the working data, but you can generate reports and save palette files as you wish.
If you need to restore the "Selected" palette, use the menu command File/Restore Selected Palette before making any new colour definition file selections.
Note that this data will be overwritten (including saved data) if you make any new selections in colour definition files.
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The main menu contains File, View and Help menus.
The File menu has the following items:
File/Quit: Closes the app.
File/Open built-in Palette File: Opens one of the built-in palette files (these are X11 style plain text files),
from the subdirectory of the installed location with the name \Palettes, in its own Colour Definition Window.
File/Open Palette File: Opens a palette file in general, in its own Colour Definition Window.
Palette files can be opened in the following formats, which you select first from a list on the dialog that this command opens:
- X11 style plain text file (this format is used for the built-in palette files)
- JASC Palette (.pal) file format
- Photoshop Color Swatch (.aco) format
- Adobe Swatch Exchange File (.ase)
- GIMP Palette (.gpl) file
Visual Colour Selector is installed with example palettes in each of these formats, other
than the application's default plain text X11 format which is available as built-in palettes.
The File/Open Palette File dialog will open the subdirectory of the installed location
with the name \ExamplePalettes, which contains subdirectories ACO, ASE, GPL and PAL
containing sample palettes for the relevant format.
File/View an Image File: Opens an image file in its own window.
The View menu has the following item:
Show Get Started page: If unticked, this shows the Get Started page. If ticked, this hides the Get Started page. The command toggles the ticked/unticked state.
The Help menu has the following items:
About: This opens a dialog to display information about the version number, build architecture, OS/Platform, build date, user's default %APPDATA% palette files,
image libraries, and credits.
View Help: Opens a browser to view the contents of this help file.
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Keyboard Shortcuts
The following shortcuts are in effect when focus is on the main Visual Colour Selector window:
[Alt+F4]: Quit - same as main menu File / Quit
[F1]: Help - same as main menu Help / Help
[Ctrl+F1]: About - same as main menu Help / About
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Miscellaneous Items
Built-in Colour Definition Files
These files are located in a sub-directory Palettes below the installation directory, e.g. on Windows,
if you installed the app to C:\Program Files\CJS VisColSel, the palette files will be in C:\Program Files\CJS VisColSel\Palettes.
Copyright and licensing details are given in the comment headers for each built-in file. Note that the multi-line comment headers
used in these built-in files may not necessarily be readable by other software.
CBPalette-Krzywinski.txt
This is a "15-Color palette for color blindness" to provide good discrimination for common color blindness types (with the exception of 2 pairs of colours
that are indistinguishable for people with tritanopia).
From material presented at Biovis 2012 (Visweek 2012), drawn from book chapter "Visualization Principles for Scientific Communication (Martin Krzywinski & Jonathan Corum)"
in "Visualizing biological data - a practical guide" (Sé́án I. O'Donoghue, James B. Procter, Kate Patterson, eds.), a survey of best practices and unsolved problems
in biological visualization.
Data Visualization, Design and Information Munging - Martin Krzywinski / Genome Sciences Center
CBPalette-Okabe-Ito.txt
This is a set of vivid, printable colours designed to be unambiguous both to colorblind and non-colorblind people,
by Masataka Okabe & Kei Ito, in their web page:
Color Universal Design (CUD) - How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people
css3-color.txt
The named colours from the CSS 3 recommendation, which includes
the X11 colors supported by popular browsers (a subset of the original X11 colours)
with the addition of gray/grey variants from SVG 1.0.
Copyright © 2015 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang). This software or document includes material copied from or derived
from CSS Color Module Level 3: https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/
Licence: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2015/doc-license
fs595c1-rgb.txt
A colour dictionary based on public domain color measurements by Hunter Lab of the US Federal Standard 595C (see reference 1 below)
NBS-ISCC-rgb.txt
The NBS/ISCC Color System Centroids
are based on a proposal by Albert H. Munsell in 1898, and developed by the Inter-Society Color Council
and the National Bureau of Standards, a US government agency.
Original website no longer exists; mirror: https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/NBS-ISCC-rgb.txt.
Resene-2010-rgb.txt
The Resene RGB Values List is a large named list of paint-based colours provided by Resene Paints Ltd (http://www.resene.co.nz)
rgb.txt
The X11 color names are defined by the rgb.txt file distributed with the X Window System, beginning with X10 release 3 (X10R3) in 1986.
The version used is from X11 release 5 or 6, dated 1994, covered by a licence based on the MIT licence.
wxColourDatabase.txt
wxWidgets (a cross-platform C++ graphical user interface software library) maintains a predefined set of named colours. Applications using this library may add to this set if desired
and look up colours by name. The colour definitions are as of wxWidgets version 3.0.2, put into an X11 style file for convenience.
As a part of wxWidgets, the wxWindows license applies: https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/licence/.
Auto-Save Files
These files are located in the user application data directory. This location is shown in the About box. They can be opened individually as
X11 format files and are also human readable.
References for palette formats
Links to catalogs of the 1383 Resene paint colours
http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/Resene-X11
Photoshop's Color Swatches palette format (.aco)
https://www.adobe.com/devnet-apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/
Downloadable colour palettes (Photoshop .aco format, Paint Shop Pro JASC Palette (.pal) file format)
http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/Palette-collections/color-palettes.htm
Reading binary .aco files
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16067301/decoding-adobe-color-files-aco-need-input-about-comprehending-the-syntax
Writing Photoshop Color Swatch (aco) files using C#
http://www.cyotek.com/blog/writing-photoshop-color-swatch-aco-files-using-csharp
Palette files - A simple comparison (examples include websafe palette, Protan palette, Deutan palette)
http://safecolours.rigdenage.com/palettefiles.html
.ASE File Extension
"ASE files were introduced with version 2 of Adobe's Creative Suite (CS).
Photoshop saves color swatches as .ACO files."
https://fileinfo.com/extension/ase
Adobe Photoshop Color File Format (.ACO files)
http://www.nomodes.com/aco.html
Tabular comparison of palette file formats
http://www.selapa.net/swatches/colors/fileformats.php
Color Wheel Swatches (For Photoshop and Other Programs) - Glen Moyes, RGB and CYMK colour wheel examples
http://glenmoyes.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/color-wheel-photoshop-swatches.html
Paint Swatch Downloads and libraries for Adobe software, and other photo editing software.
Swatch files for Photoshop, or Color Book files for AutoCAD
https://www.dunnedwards.com/colors/download-color-swatches
Palette downloads for Photoshop Palette (.ACO and .ASE)
https://www.ppgvoiceofcolor.com/digital-color/palette-downloads
GIMP palette file (.gpl) format / syntax
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60916860/gimp-palette-file-gpl-format-syntax
Additional references for colour lists:
- Color-Name Dictionaries by Aubrey Jaffer
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Sources for Color Coordinates
- Colour Spaces by Paul Bourke May 1995
Performance
Generating large (256 or more colours) optimised palettes from random colours, and previewing significantly large image files (around 2 Megapixels or more)
with conversions to display simulated colour deficiencies are CPU-intensive operations which may take around 3s on a fourth-generation Intel Core CPU,
or 30s or more on older processors such as the second-generation Intel Atom. Larger palettes and image files require more processing time.
The following graphs show CPU times for these operations on a 4th generation Intel Core CPU:
Privacy
Visual Colour Selector does not collect any personal information or send anything over the internet.
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Feedback, Suggestions, and Bug Reports
Feedback about your experience with this application, suggestions for improvements, and bug reports should any problems occur, are always welcome, and can be reported
using the contact information form at http://colinjs.com/contact.htm.
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Licensing
Version 1.2 is provided as freeware with no registration requirements and no feature limitations.
Product Features Matrix
Feature
Available Settings
Max. no. of optimised colours to generate
Unlimited
Licence Use Restriction
Unlimited
Delta-E Standards
CIE76, CIE94, CIEDE2000
Contrast Threshold
WCAG 2.0 level AA, WCAG 2.0 level AAA, custom
All other features
Unlimited
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Updates and free licensing for old versions
Updates may be downloaded from the website at http://colinjs.com/software.htm.
Look for the Visual Colour Selector application.
If you wish to use an earlier version (e.g. Linux and macOS versions that have not been updaed)
just send your Product Key using the contact page at http://colinjs.com/contact.htm.
Registration details or payment are no longer required.
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