Allow to group colors in a palette

I got a lot of small 4-5 color palettes for different purposes, but I wish I had them all in one ~128 sized palette. Eventually, it becomes messy and sometimes ends up in inserting some unused colors so that palette align is one sub-palette per row. The request is the following:

  • allow to group colors under a name, colors don’t lose their original indices;
  • allow to add an already existing palette or a part of it as a group;
  • allow to reorganize color groups layout without colors losing their original indices;
  • colors in color group preserve all original editing/moving functions.
  • (optional) allow a color to be a part of different groups, modifying such color will prompt user (can be disabled), where they can choose to either modify original color in all groups or add a new one to the master palette.

Something like this:

PaletteGroups

It is always possible to switch back to normal palette view.

Pros:

  • you keep your colors organized;
  • no more reference sprites;
  • other artists in your team don’t have a need to recheck colors, nor manage multiple palettes.

Cons:

  • where to store this? In *.ase directly or separately as a new format? Document templates?
7 Likes

This would be seriously amazing feature. The current way of grouping the palette isn’t very helpful for me. I have to have color splotches around the canvas with colors I need. Pretty much grouped like you have it in your example.

4 Likes

I actually asked for this here: Group Swatches Within Palette - #3 by thedesignerkennedy but I totally agree. I’ll continue to keep an eye out for this, but I know that it’s not a bug, so it probably has low priority. Glad other users are requesting this!

1 Like

@Makapixel
I agree on that reference layers take a lot of space and moving them here-there-everywhere is truly tedious. I work in pair with another artist, and currently we were forced to create a spreadsheet for palette explanation.


@thedesignerkennedy
Yes, naming individual colors is also a very needed feature. I’m using my old fully named GIMP palettes with actual palette opened in Notepad++ :expressionless:


I’m happy this topic draws attention. :smiley:

1 Like

This issue is related with the Shading Ink in some way. I’d like to have the capacity to specify color groups so the Shading Ink can work automatically on those groups separately (without having to configure the shade manually each time).

I’d love it if I could have labels even on each color, like in Photoshop’s swatches window and you can label them individually and save them as an .ase file IIRC. You can change the size and if the label is displayed or not.

Grouping colors for ramps that are compatible with the Shading Ink would be great too. Though sophisticated palettes use one color in multiple ramps, like all the ramps blending into one light color, etc.

Color names are planned too (actually they are supported in the .ase format)

5 Likes

I suggest separate Named Color Ramps just after the palette itself with groups entries mapped to palette entries by index and kept consistent across all operations. There could be different color ramps using same palette entries, so mapping by index is really crucial. Yes, same index could be used multiple times in any ramp. Also there could be same RGB colors in palette that should be mapped to different ramps, so keeping track of palette change operations should be exact and delicate. When colors get moved in palette in should automatically fix all ramps it contains to map to new indexes. When colors get deleted from palette it should warn about Ramps going to be damaged with Y/N msgbox and then replace them with palette entry index 0.

1 Like

this feature feels like it would be kinda messy exeptionally since i dont know a single program with a feature like this

but insted i would like to redirect you attention to this thread here: Palette Organization?

if palette tabs were actually added you could just put tiny palettes in it and load it, and that seems like a much more reasonable request

thought i would like to adress one thing here, thats not the focus of this thread but being able to organize the palette without needing to create endless void indexes especially in rgb mode would help immensely organizing your palette.

No, sorting by hue is not an option for exact color indexes mapping. It could be technical specification of game rendering to use some exact indexes for this or that things.

It would NOT be messy if organized like additional tab with ← (back) or X (close) button, hiding actual palette when active. Should be hidden in submenu, though. Create new ramps, add/del cells of ramps in 2 dimensions(!), modify cells colors by picking color from palette popup, rename ramps, move ramps up/down, make multiple ramps using same colors, create ramp from selected palette colors (and auto-switch to Ramps tab) and more.

It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this! :electric_plug: :dagger:

---- > Aseprite Companion < ------

I just added a color grouping tool. It might be what you are looking for :slightly_smiling_face:

Cheers!

3 Likes