How to Create Custom Color Palettes in Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop provides a feature for creating custom color palettes that can be a very helpful tool in creating your designs. Whether you are working on a photo retouching project or creating elements for a website, a custom set of color swatches can make the process easier and more efficient. It can also help you maintain consistency between multiple files for the same project or client.
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Instructions
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Launch Adobe Photoshop and select a base color palette. Open your color swatches window by clicking "Window > Swatches" from the main Photoshop menu. Then click the arrow button in the upper right corner of the Swatches window to choose your palette. Start with a palette that reflects the nature of your project. For example, if you are working on a website, you can choose one of Photoshop's web color palettes as your base. If you would like to create a color palette using only the colors you've selected, you can start with a base palette like the "photo filters" palette that contains very few swatches. That way, the existing colors will be easy to remove.
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Remove any unwanted colors from your base palette. Just hold down the "option" key and mouse over the color swatch you would like to delete. Your cursor will change to a pair of scissors. Click the swatch and it should be removed from the palette. Repeat the process until you are left with only the colors you would like to keep.
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Choose the new colors you would like to add to the custom palette. Click the foreground color box in the main toolbox. The "Color Picker" dialog box will open. From this box, you may scroll for colors in the color spectrum, add specific web color hex codes or input RGB settings to choose your color. You may also click the "Color Libraries" button to choose colors such as Pantone swatches from one of the standard color palettes. Once you've selected a color, click the "OK" button. When you click the arrow in the corner of the Swatches window again, click "New Swatch." Name your color and click "OK" to add it to your palette. Repeat this process until you have added your full set of colors.
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Save your custom color palette. Click the arrow in the upper right corner of the Swatches window again and choose "Save Swatches." Name your custom palette and it will be saved as an "aco" file in the Photoshop "Color Swatches" folder. Once saved, you can load this palette whenever you need it, add new swatches and resave as necessary.
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