Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Manual (Page 125)

118 USING PHOTOSHOP CS4
Color fundamentals
Last updated 1/10/2010
2 Do one of the following:
• Choose Image > Mode > Color Table.
• Choose Image > Mode > Indexed Color. In the Indexed Color dialog box, choose Custom from the Panel pop-up
menu. This opens the Color Table dialog box.
3 In the Color Table dialog box, choose a predefined table from the Table menu.
Custom Creates a palette you specify.
Black Body Displays a palette based on the different colors a black body radiator emits as it is heated—from black to
red, orange, yellow, and white.
Grayscale Displays a palette based on 256 levels of gray—from black to white.
Spectrum Displays a palette based on the colors produced as white light passes through a prism—from violet, blue,
and green to yellow, orange, and red.
System (Mac OS) Displays the standard Mac OS 256-color system palette.
System (Windows) Displays the standard Windows 256-color system palette.
Save and load color tables
You use the Save and Load buttons in the Color Table dialog box to save your indexed color tables for use with other
Adobe Photoshop images. After you load a color table into an image, the colors in the image change to reflect the color
positions they reference in the new color table.
Note: You can also load saved color tables into the Swatches panel.
Choosing colors
About foreground and background colors
Photoshop uses the foreground color to paint, fill, and stroke selections and the background color to make gradient fills
and fill in the erased areas of an image. The foreground and background colors are also used by some special effects
filters.
You can designate a new foreground or background color using the Eyedropper tool, the Color panel, the Swatches
panel, or the Adobe Color Picker.
The default foreground color is black, and the default background color is white. (In an alpha channel, the default
foreground is white, and the background is black.)
Choose colors in the toolbox
The current foreground color appears in the upper color selection box in the toolbox; the current background color
appears in the lower box.