Overview

The Spectrum Gradient application allows you to interactively create palettes, which are simply 256 color sequences. But Spectrum Gradient is about more than just palettes. It is a very powerful tool for experimenting with color. Drag one of the color waveform sliders and see what happens. If you see a color that you like, you can determine exactly how it was 'mixed' by moving the mouse over it. The lower right corner of the Spectrum Gradient app displays the red, green, and blue values for the pixel under the mouse.

When you drag the mouse over colors in the Spectrum Gradient window, a palette is created that starts with the color where the mouse was pressed down, and ends with the color where the mouse was released. This palette is displayed on the Spectrum Gradient toolbar. Even if you are not interested in palettes, this can be a very useful feature, because it effectively allows you to zoom in on colors in the Spectrum Gradient window. This can be very useful if you are interested in exploring subtle color shadings.

The export palette button() copies the local Spectrum Gradient palette into the Palette Selector application. This button is generally sticky, so that once pressed, it stays depressed until you click it again. When the button is depressed, the local palette is continuously copied to the Palette Selector as it changes. You can change the Spectrum Gradient palette in a variety of ways, such as dragging the mouse in the Spectrum Gradient window, or by changing a color waveform parameter while the Lock Palette to Full Window () button is depressed.

The launch Palette Selector button() launches the Palette Selector application.

 

The Spectrum Gradient's current palette is displayed in the palette window on the Spectrum Gradient toolbar. This is generally some sort of subset of the colors displayed in the Spectrum Gradient main window.

The Red, Green, and Blue Waveform Parameter dialogs allow you to specify how the color levels vary from the left to the right side of the Spectrum Gradient window.

The Lock Palette to Full Window button is sticky. When depressed, the Spectrum Shift palette is created by sampling colors from the full Spectrum Gradient Window. If the user drags the mouse in the Spectrum Gradient window to create a new palette, then this button pops up, because the palette is no longer locked to the full window.

The Symmetric Palettes button is sticky. When depressed, all new Spectrum Shift palettes are created in a symmetric way so that the last palette color wraps around back into the first palette color.

The File Open and File SaveAs operations allow you load and store Spectrum Gradient parameter settings from/to files.

The Copy to Clipboard operation allows you to copy the image in the Spectrum Gradient main window into the Windows clipboard. This allows you to paste color gradient images into third party applications such as PhotoShop.