Visions Of Chaos Color Palettes Tutorial Color palettes determine how the images Visions Of Chaos appear. Using palettes is an important topic to creating pleasing looking images. Color Palettes are made up of a series of 256 colors.

Loading a Color Palette To load a color palette, click the Open Palette File button on the toolbar. Once clicked it will show the Open Palette File dialog. From this dialog you can scroll up and down to see the sample palette files included with Visions Of Chaos (over 1,200 at the moment). When you click a name it will show a preview of the palette colors. Tip: An easier way to see all the palettes available is to click the Browse button. This opens up a scrollable window of the palettes available. Click any of the palette preview images to select it. Once you have a palette selected, click Load to load the palette file as the current color scheme for Visions Of Chaos. Tip: If you have a simulation running and want to switch between different palettes to see how they look, leave the palette window open (drag it to the side away from the main window), select a palette file and then click Apply to immediately change to that color scheme. Double-clicking the palette file name is the same as highlighting one and then clicking apply.

Creating New Color Palettes Visions Of Chaos includes a color palette editor that has many ways to create new color palettes. To open the color palette editor select Utilities->Color Palette Editor. The following sections will explain what the various tabs do on the color palette editor

Color Palette Editor - Specific Blends The specific blends tab allows simple palettes to be created by smoothly blending between two colors. For example, click the Color 1 square and change it to red, then click the Color 2 square and change it to blue. When clicked the Blend Modes blend the two colors in different ways. Standard Blend smoothly shades the 2 colors Line Blend smoothly shades the 2 colors and puts a black line between every second line Stripe Blend alternates the colors through the palette

Color Palette Editor - Auto Blend The Auto Blends tab allows palettes to be created by smoothly blending between a series of colors. You set a series of colors and then use the Auto-Blend Functions to combine the colors into new palettes. The Color Wheel button opens a color wheel that allows a series of colors to be automatically chosen based on various color theory techniques. The Colors From Image button opens a dialog that allows a series of colors to be extracted from an image file.

Color Palette Editor - Other Effects The Other Effects tab has buttons that change the appearance of the palette by increasing and reducing specific color channels within the palette.

Color Palette Editor - Custom Blend The Custom Blend tab allows specific colors to be inserted into the palette at custom points to create a blended palette.

Color Palette Editor - SIN Blend The SIN Blend tab creates color palettes by using Sin waves to set the red, green and blue components of the palette colors. The easiest way to use this feature is to keep clicking the Random button until an interesting or pleasing color palette is created.