Downloads | Tutorials
Tutorials
Items shall be added here as and when time permits. To start with, it only seems sensible to give some kind of introduction as to how to use the Fireworks .act files on the downloads page.
Make your own Fireworks palettes - simple | advanced
If you have downloaded some of my free Fireworks palettes, you may be interested in how to design, save and use your own paletes. These can then be used in many graphics programs: Macromedia FreeHand, Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash, and Adobe Photoshop, among others.
Skintone Palette
I
shall run through the process I used to create the 'Pale_Skin' palette for
this tutorial.
Choose the image
The first and most important step is to choose a suitable photograph or graphic, or a selection of a photograph or graphic, which contains a pleasing range of colours. I have chosen this photo (right), for it's pleasing skin tones. BTW, this is from my own portfolio of travel photography at stickyrice.co.uk.
Next you should save your file as a Fireworks .png file.
There is obviously somewhat of a blue cast from the parasol on the hair and forehead, and the bright red lipstick is not what we're after, for our natural palette.
So first, we are going to crop the picture, as shown by the blue box on the second image, above. This area seems to contain a pleasing range of tones of white skin and reddish blush, along with one or two freckles for even more of a natural feel!
Save the colours
If the Optimize panel isn't open already, open it now (Window > Optimize or F6). Make sure that the settings here are set to optimize as a GIF, PNG 8, TIFF 8 or BMP 8 with a wide colour selection, (for this example, I chose the preset, GIF Adaptive 256. Remember, we are not going to export the image, but Fireworks will not be able to save a colour selection if we have the image set to optimize as a .jpeg.
Once you have cropped the image in Fireworks, go the File menu and select Export Preview... (or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+X). Click OK.
Now, if it's not already open, open up your swatches panel, (Ctrl+F9).
Click on the dropdown menu at the top-right of the window, and select the option Current Export Palette. Magically the colours from your selective crop appear in the swatches panel.
If you find it easier to work with, click the drop-down menu once again, and select Sort by Color.
In order to work with these colours in a new file, it's easier to open them up via the Properties panel, or the Colors section of the Tools panel: just click on the the colour block next to the paint bucket icon in either of these locations, click on the arrow in the top-right corner of the pop-up and select Swatches Panel.
Saving and organizing your palettes
Once you've lovingly created your swatches, you'll probably want to save them for future use. With the swatches panel open, click on the drop-down menu once again, and this time select Save Swatches.... A Save As dialog box will appear with the Save as type: field set to Color Table (*.act). Choose an appropriate filename, and save to a memorable location.
Using your palette
OK, now you've got the palette, what do you do with it?! Used as a guide, your palette is handy for Website colour schemes or for new graphics. If you are careful with your choice of original image, and in your cropped selections, then photographs of natural scenes offer perhaps the best, and safest, starting point. Skintones are great, as are sunsets, and landscapes.
Download the finished palette or preview it first.
