Creating and sharing Corel® Painter™ IX custom palettes

Corel® Painter™ IX gives you the freedom to create custom palettes that contain exactly the features you want. You can create special palettes for a particular project or workflow that you use frequently. You can then switch between the palettes as needed. There is no limit on the number of custom palettes you can create. Corel Painter saves the palettes from session to session, so you can access the necessary tools immediately whenever you sit down to work. Once you create a custom palette, you can also save it externally to share it with others. In addition, you can open custom palettes that were created by others.

When creating a custom palette, you can place items from the Brush Selector bar, any of the six content selectors (papers, patterns, looks, weaves, nozzles, or gradients), Library palettes, or Script palettes. You can also add menu commands, such as File menu > New, to a custom palette.

Items that appear on a custom palette are references (aliases or shortcuts) to the original. This means that if you change the original—for example, by modifying and saving a brush variant—the custom palette button loads the newest version. If you delete the original, however, Corel Painter won't be able to find the item again to load on the custom palette.

To create a custom palette

Drag an icon or button out of its palette or out of the Brush Selector bar.

Corel Painter created a custom palette that contains an icon for the item that was dragged.

If you want to continue building the custom palette, simply drag more icons to it.

In this example, the Gouache brush was added to Custom 1.

To add menu commands to a custom palette

1. Click Window > Custom palette > Add command.

   

2. Choose a custom palette from the Add to list box.

   

3. Open a menu and choose a command.

   

   In this example, we opened the Canvas menu and chose Tracing paper.

4. Click OK.

   

   The Tracing paper command is added to the custom palette.

Once you create custom palettes, you can open and close them as needed.

To open a custom palette

Click Window > Custom palette > [Custom Palette Name].

To close a custom palette

On the custom palette title bar, click the close button.

To share a custom palette with others

1. Click Window > Custom Palette > Organizer.

   

2. In the Custom Palette Organizer, select the palette you want to share from the Custom Palette list.

3. Click Export.

4. In the New Palette File dialog box, type the name for the custom palette file in the File name box.

   

5. Choose the drive and folder where you want to save the file.

   The custom palette file has the .pal file extension.

To load a custom palette that was created by someone else

1. Click Window > Custom Palette > Organizer.

2. Click Import.

   

3. In the Open Palette File dialog box, browse to the drive and folder where the custom palette file is stored.

4. Choose the .pal file.

5. Click Open.

Only custom palette files created with version 8.1 or later are supported by Corel Painter IX. Custom palettes created with version 7 and earlier will not load.