Color Editor Commands

To use the editor, select "Edit current color palette" from the "File"
menu, or press the "e" key. Two color registers are displayed at the
top of the dialog, and the color palette will be displayed below.
Only the color in the active register may be edited. Colors in the
inactive register will follow the mouse (until a range is selected,
see below). The inactive register will display the color that is under
the mouse pointer if the pointer is in the editor dialog or in the image
window. You may select a color to edit by clicking the left mouse button
in the desired color in either window. If you click in the image window,
a small circle is drawn on the image to remind you where you clicked.
A white dashed line is drawn around the selected color box in the
editor palette, and the selected color plus it's red, green, and blue
component values are displayed in the active register scale widgets.
Moving the bars on the scales will change the color.

For range selection, the palette rectangles are numbered from left
to right, and top to bottom. That is, the upper left corner is the
lowest numbered rectangle and the bottom right is the highest.
To select a range of colors to operate upon, select the start of the
range with the left mouse button. Again, a white dashed line is drawn
around the selected color box in the editor palette. Select the end of
the range by pressing the center mouse button down in the desired
color. This time, a solid white line will be drawn around the selected
box, and the range operation menu items will be enabled (not greyed
out). The inactive register will no longer follow the mouse. Select the
desired range operation from the menu. You may get the inactive register
color to follow the mouse again by cancelling the range selection from
the range sub-menu.

Changes made in the palette will be immediately reflected in the image,
and you may save the image or the palette at any time.

Palette edit commands are saved in a history file, and may be undone
(and undo's may be redone) if the command-line or initialization file
parameter undo= value is greater than zero. This value defaults to
8192, giving you that many commands that may be undone. Pressing the
Apply or Done button will cause the undo memory to be reset to zero.
On machines with a limited memory, this feature may be disabled with
an undo=0 entry on the command line or in an initialization file.

Experiment with the palette editor to become familiar with these
operations. Hands-on experimentation will make these operation much
more clear because you can see the colors change, rather than just
numbers in these crude boxes...

The freestyle mode works on a variable range of colour palette
indices and is activated from the colour palette editor main menu bar.
It controls a moving window within the full palette by attaching the
center index of the freestyle range to the mouse position. Moving
the mouse across the canvas or the colour palette causes the freestyle
window to track with it. Colours within the window spontaineously change
as the effected range is shifted but are restored to the original
colours as the window moves on. Colour changes are committed to the
palette by a click on the left mouse button.

A gamma value is applied to transform the color through the
selected width to the selected end color. The resulting "bar" of
colors may applied to the image and the palette by clicking the
left mouse button in the desired location on the image or the
palette colorbox. Selecting a higher gamma value will result in
a sharper contrast and a lower value results in a smoother,
softer transition of colors from the center of the bar to the
edges.

This gamma value also effects the transition of colors selected
for the endpoints of any smooth or striped range of colors.
Again, selecting a higher gamma value will result in a sharper
transition of color and a lower value results in a smoother,
softer transition of colors from the beginning of the selected
range to the end of the selected range.

You may also edit the color that is used as the center color for
the freestyle option. The selected index for the center color
defaults to the highest index available, but you may set this
to be any available index.

Also in the freestyle option dialog, you may set the endpoint
colors that are used to transform the center color to the endpoint
color in the freestyle editing range. If you set the endpoint color
selector to -1 for either, or both, of the endpoints, the color under
the end of the "bar" of colors that is selected will become the
endpoint color to which the center color is transformed.

The transparency of the overlayed color bar in the freestyle
mode is selected by a scale at the bottom of the freestyle
options dialog. If the transparency is set to 0, the overlayed
colors are opaque and the underlying colors are not visible. If
the transparency is set to 100, the overlying colors are invisible.
The transparency of the overlayed colors is continuously variable
from opaque to transparent.

The freestyle wraparound mode will cause the bar of colors to wrap
around the beginning or end of the palette if the range extends
beyond the first or last color in the palette.

In addition, the color cycling operations are available.

Start or stop the color cycling by pressing the "c" key while the
main window has the input focus. Colors may be cycled if you have
completed or partially completed the creation of an image and/or
if the palette editor is displayed.

You may change the speed of the color cycling by pressing the keypad
up and down arrow keys or the cursor up and down arrow keys, whichever
is appropriate for your keyboard. The keypad "+" and "-" keys and the
alphabetic "+" and "-" keys will cause the palette cycle to change
direction. Pressing the "+" and "-" key when not color cycling will
cause the palette to rotate one step in the indicated direction.

The keypad "Enter" key will randomize the palette.

See "Color Cycling Commands" for more information about rotating
the color palette.