Create Your Own Painter’s Palette in Photoshop
In the digital world, there are literally millions of colors available for you to use. Photoshop provides its own color picker, but if you’re looking for a more traditional solution, here’s a quick little tip to get you started.
Create a new file. It doesn’t have to be huge (mine is 640×480 pixels).
I then filled my background layer with a middle gray, just because I don’t like working on white.
Create a new layer and paint on dots of your own colors. I chose colors that directly represented the tubes of paint that I have stashed in my art box, and I’ve laid them out in the same way that I squeeze them on my traditional palette.
Here are the HSB values of all the colors I made:
Cadmium Yellow
Yellow Ochre
Cadmium Red
Crimson
Cerulean Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber
You can change the values to match your own color preferences and computer monitor, or create your own favorite colors.
Save your palette file so you can use it later.
Now, whenever you start a new painting, you can open this file and place it next to your image.
You can now blend your colors by simply picking up the color you want and brushing them together with another color. Set your brush so that the opacity is controlled by pen pressure, and use the eye dropper tool to pick up blends of different colors. Blend your colors on a new layer so that when you want to “clean up,” you can just throw the layer away. Or just hide the layer if you want to keep the colors for future use.
If you use the brush tool to blend your colors, it’s inconvenient to have to change the size or the settings of your brush every time you want to blend a new color on your palette. I like to use the pencil tool instead. To switch back and forth between the pencil and the brush I am currently using, all I have to do is push Shift+B.
If you’re a traditional oil or acrylic painter, this should help you transition into digital painting a little better. Have a question or comment? Leave a message on DaniDraws.com. Happy Painting!
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February 11th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Truly unique tutorial, haven’t seen this one before. Useful for coloring lineart by putting web-safe colors in there.
September 8th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I did the pallete tutorial. The steps are very clear, but I am having a little truble blending colors and transfering them to a new page. I guess I need to know more about bush settings to be able to use the right brush and size of brush. So next I will check your brush tutorials. Thanks you for your time in sharing this with us. I’ll keep in touch.
Mara
September 12th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Interesting stuff… I’m so accustomed to just picking colors, but I’m anxious to create a traditional pallette and blend my own colors.
For Mara:
If you’re using a wacom tablet or some other sort of pressure sensitive drawing tool… You should be able to set your brush to have it’s opacity respond to the amount of pressure you’re applying with your stylus. It shouldn’t really matter which brush you’re using, as long as you have control over the opacity. You want the the colors you’ve chosen to mix to be able to layer over top of one another. You could also try using the Smudge tool in photoshop to blend the colors as well.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Mara, to blend colors, you must constantly use the eyedropper tool and a brush at a lower opacity. Use the eyedropper (keyboard shortcut: the “option” key or the letter “i”) to keep picking up colors, and also transfer them to a new page. And like bob said, using a lower opacity brush will let the colors blend together.