How To Edit and Make Palettes

GIMP palettes are simple text files or complicated gui. It is your choice.

While playing with the GIMP palettes, it is good to note that none of the new palettes you make will be saved to your disk until you quit the session; unless you save it. GIMP might tell you differently.

Make a New Palette: Start with <Toolbox>/Dialogs/Palettes and make a new palette.
Palette Editor: How to use the palette editor to add new and delete colors or to move existing colors around.
Save Palettes Nicely: Just a couple of extra steps makes for nicer palettes
Import Palettes from Photographs: Make palettes from image files.
Limits on Colors: 256 (the upper limit) colors can be too many. There are at least three ways to limit the colors of an image to 256 or less; this is one of the ways.
Make cgocss: How to make a palette for my palette-css script.

Make a New Palette

through the gui

Take a few minutes with the Palette Dialog (Palette) and the mouse and review the tooltips that describe the things the buttons do.

The same options are available by right clicking on the dialog face or through the little arrow button in the upper right corner of the dialog box.

Make a "New palette".to see the Palette Editor....

Take a few minutes with the Palette Editor and the mouse and review the tooltips that describe the things the buttons do.

In this example, a color has been added from <Toolbox>/Dialogs/Colors (titled FG/BG). The html color has been added to the comment area for the color entry.

through a text editor

This is what a palette file looks like. It is (r,g,b) colors with a name for the palette entry. This is one of the ways to prepare a palette for this palettes for better planet(s).

            
GIMP Palette
Name: wilber-stars-8
Columns: 4
#
  0   0   0     Index 3
 65  38  30     Index 4
103  62  49     Index 6
 79  73  72     Index 7
114 101  97     Index 8
208 127 100     Index 9 
151 144 142     Index 10
221 207 199     Index 11

It is possible to duplicate a palette and change its name and the color order simply with a text editor:

            
GIMP Palette
Name: wilber-stars-reorder
Columns: 4
#
208 127 100     Index 9 
  0   0   0     Index 3 
 65  38  30     Index 4
103  62  49     Index 6
 79  73  72     Index 7
114 101  97     Index 8
151 144 142     Index 10
221 207 199     Index 11

Palette Editor

Through the Palette Editor you can delete, add and change colors. Selecting Edit with a color selected will give you the Palette Color Editor, select a new color and touch the ok button and the color in the palette will be changed.

New additions are added to the end of the list.

Save Palettes Nicely

GIMP will save the palette with the name it has and gimp will give it a name. If you change the name before you either quit the session or manually save the palette during the session, GIMP will use the new name to save the file with. If you start to get a lot of palettes, it is really good practice to have the palette name match the palette file.

Import Palettes from Photographs

Right click with the mouse on the palette palette face and select "Import palette..." from the options; <Palettes>/Import:

Through this palette import dialog you can change the name (it will use the image name along with the image-id number if you don't) and set the column display.

Don't import RGB images!

Avoid using this dialog to initially reduce the image colors as it takes the first 256 (out of approximately 16 million colors) and basically makes palettes that suck. Don't use on RGB images.

Limit Colors

There is a limit on how many colors you can make and import from an image, the limit is 256 colors. GIMP palettes have no such limit. You can use the palette or text editor to add another color to a palette. This is about what you can get from the image initially.

Limit the colors of the image before using the palette importer by indexing (<Image>/Image/Mode/Index) the image first. Change the number in the "Generate optimum palette" dialog to make less than 256 colors:

Now it is safe to use the Import Palette Dialog.

For my css script

From a script, GIMP can read a palette that exists or read one from a template and load it into itself during a session or even make a brand new one, use it and delete it while running. This can be nice for making web pages, if the palettes have a certain order.

First I made a palette of the color keywords from w3c CSS by using the desktop color picker found in the Color Dialog (FG/BG). I put the keywords into the palette via the gui while I was using the color picker.

            
GIMP Palette
Name: Web Keyword Colors
Columns: 5
#
  0   0   0	black
192 192 192	silver
128 128 128	gray
  0   0 128	navy
  0   0 255	blue
  0 255 255	aqua
  0 128 128	teal
128   0 128	purple
255   0 255	fuchia
255 255 255	white
  0 255   0	lime
  0 128   0	green
128   0   0	maroon
255   0   0	red
255 165   0	orange
255 255   0	yellow
128 128   0	olive

            
GIMP Palette
Name: Web Keyword Colors CGOhtml
Columns: 5
#
255 255 255	background
  0   0   0	foreground
  0   0 255	link
128   0 128	visited
255   0   0	active
255 165   0	hover
  0   0 255	border
192 192 192	silver
128 128 128	gray
  0   0 128	navy
  0 255 255	aqua
  0 128 128	teal
128   0 128	purple
255   0 255	fuchia
  0 255   0	lime
  0 128   0	green
128   0   0	maroon
255 255   0	yellow
128 128   0	olive
  0   0   0	black
  0   0 255	blue
128   0 128	purple
255 255 255	white
255   0   0	red
255 165   0	orange

I used a text editor and copied the colors to the order I want the script to use and changed the name from the color-keyword to the css entity it will be used for.

background
foreground
link
visited
active
hover
border

[download palettes]