Photoshop Tutorial for Fashion Design (Part 15)
Palettes: Color Palette, RGB Colors

Color palette displays foreground and background colors and allows you to change them. There are few ways to change your colors. The first option is the same as we’ve covered in the Toolbox [section]. Double-click on the background or foreground swatch to open the color picker dialog and select the color. The second option: you can use the color spectrum bar at the bottom of the palette. First click on either foreground or background swatch to activate. Then roll the cursor over to the bar area and click to select the desired color. The third option allows you to enter a specific color value. Hopefully by now you’ve read about the colors on our website. If not, please pause and read the introduction and instructions on our “Printable RGB Color Palette Swatches” page.

I’ve opened a file from the printable library to show how it works. Let’s pretend that the file you see on the screen is a printed sheet of paper I have in my hands. And let’s say from the printed version I’ve selected a purple that matches my season color. At the bottom of each swatch you can see RGB values of the color: red, green and blue. I’m going to enter them in the respective fields in the color palette. Activate foreground color and then enter 127 for red, 17 for green, and 131 for blue. Hit Enter [Return] key. And now I can work with this purple color knowing exactly how it will look when I print my document. Believe it or not, in the fashion industry, this is the most common and efficient way of setting the colors.

And the last option in the color palette is to use the sliders. By dragging the slider left or right you can adjust the amount of red, green or blue in the currently selected color. To be proficient with that option you need to understand how RGB values work.

The RGB color model adds red, green and blue lights together in various ways to produce a broad array of colors. The main purpose of the RGB model is to display images in electronic systems such as televisions and computers. It has also been used in photography lately. Although fashion designers heavily depend on printers that work in the CMYK mode, the RGB model is much easier to handle. Fashion industry-specific software that come with printable color libraries use Pantone Textile standard and RGB spectrum for color values. Now let’s see how it works.

If you set red, green and blue to 0 you will get pure black. And the opposite is true: if you set red, green and blue to the maximum value, which is 255, you will get pure white. Having red, green and blue set with the same values, let’s say 125, you will get a shade of grey. A lower value will result in darker grey: let’s say 50. I’m using the Tab key on my keyboard to switch between colors and hitting Enter [Return]. And higher values will result in lighter grey. With only one color having value and the other two set at 0, you will get pure red, green or blue. At 255 value combination, red and green will result in pure yellow, red and blue will result in magenta and green and blue in pure cyan. To create a deeper color shade, let’s use cyan as an example, I can reduce the amount of color keeping it at the same level. In this case green and blue. Bringing the red value up with the highest setting of green and blue will result in a lighter shade of cyan. You can clearly see the effect in the color bars. Reducing the blue will result in green, adding red will result in yellow and adjusting the blue again will result in a lighter yellow shade.

If you don’t have a printable color library, you’ll use this feature often. For example, I’ve selected the perfect pink color but when I printed it, the color looked too orange. Now you’ll need to use your imagination because that orange shade color I just printed will look as perfect pink on my screen. I will set the RGB to orange shade just for illustration purposes. In reality, you will have to work with the original RGB settings of the chosen color. So I know, to fix this problem, I need to increase the amount of blue which I can clearly see in the color bar. Increasing blue, however, can also result in color being lighter than I wished for. So, to address this problem I can simply reduce the amount of green. Now to make sure, I’ll need to print the color again. I will keep repeating the process until I’m satisfied with the results.

I strongly suggest to choose and set your colors before you proceed with your artwork. It will spare you a lot of time, ink and paper. If you’re planning to be or already are a professional in the fashion industry you should spend some time getting to know RGB. Not only will you be able to manage colors in the color palette but it will also enable you to make proper adjustments using Color Balance and Variations.

Let me give you another example. Let’s pretend that this is my original artwork I have in my hands. When I scan in my artwork, it can easily look like this. Ignoring the monitor factor for now, that’s how the scanner reads the colors and in this case, the scanner added magenta. Now, I’ve exaggerated the changes so that you could see it better on your screen. Well, then when I print, the final output can look like this. Because the printer did its own interpretation and added yellow. Although I did nothing with the file but scanned and printed, my colors changed. To get accurate colors, I would have to go back to the scanned document and reduce the amount of magenta and yellow, either by using Color Balance or Variations. Keep in mind that I’m using modified artwork for illustration purposes only. Now, to reduce magenta, I need to add green and to reduce yellow, I need to add blue.

By the way, I don’t suggest trying to adjust the colors based on what you see on your screen. Depending on the color calibration your monitor will give you its own color interpretations. You might have noticed before how the same file can look different on different screens. So, as a fashion designer, your only point of reference should be a printed copy. And all color adjustments should be done accordingly.

For more about RGB colors and color balance, check out our “Adobe Photoshop for the Fashion Industry” ebook. And to resolve color discrepancies between your printer and your monitor get our “Printable RGB Color Palette Swatches”.

And finally, just like with any other palette, click on the palette menu button for the list of options.