Choosing and using colors
Colors for objects in Comic Strip Factory are generally chosen from color sets that are included in both comic and parts documents. There are two exceptions to this: colors in balloon text and colors in gradients are chosen directly using a color popup. The benefit of named colors in color sets is that the colors can be replaced globally throughout a document.
Colors in color sets have a name and a color definition. The color definition includes an opacity setting, so colors in color sets can be partly transparent. Most color sets come from a parts document, and a parts document can contain only one color set. Comic documents can have multiple colors sets. They have one of their own, named Comic, and one for each character or background that has been imported into the comic from a parts file, named for the character or background.
Editing colors
Comic strip Factory uses a set of color editing controls anyplace where you can directly pick a color. As mentioned above, it is used directly to choose colors for text or gradients, but other areas use named colors in color sets. But the program’s color editing controls are also used to edit colors in color sets and add new colors to color sets.
The color editor popup
The color editing controls usually appear in a popup like this. The popups have a pointy part that is attached to whatever control the color editor is setting a color on, such as a color button or a gradient color stop marker. These controls also appear in a dialog when you are creating a new color set color from the Document Colors window.
The vertical bar on the left is the hue slider. It is used to set the hue of the color. The square area in the middle of the popup shows the full range of saturations and brightnesses of the currently selected hue. Move the circular handle inside it left and right to adjust saturation and up and down to adjust brightness. You can do this by grabbing it directly or by clicking and dragging just outside any of the four edges of the square, which allows you to adjust either saturation or brightness without affecting the other.
The bar on the right adjusts the opacity of the chosen color. Putting the marker all the way to the top makes the color fully opaque and all the away to the bottom makes it fully transparent.
The grid underneath those controls is a handy place to save colors to reuse later. This is useful for text or gradients, since they don’t use named colors, and for copying a color from one document to another. The - and + buttons remove colors from and add colors to this grid. To remove a color, you have to click on it to select it first. The larger swatch on the right shows the current color value.
On the bottom is an eyedropper icon. Click on this to activate a tool and magnifying glass that allows you to pick a color from anywhere on the screen by clicking it.
Choosing color set colors
Any place where you can use a color from a color set, you will see a color popup menu button.
This can be found in dialogs and in the Properties panel in the part editor . It shows the current color value of the selected object or the object being edited by the dialog. If you click it, it shows a menu with all of the colors available in the current color set. If you are working with paths in a part, the color set shown will be the one the part is associated with. If the part came from a parts document, it will be that parts document’s color set. If the part was created in a comic document, you assigned it to a particular color set when you created it.
If you are editing a panel or a balloon in a properties dialog, the color set of the popup menu is the comic document’s Comic color set.
You can choose any of the colors in the popup menu to change the object to use that color. If there is no color in the menu that matches what you need, you can choose the Add Color… item at the bottom of the menu. This will create a new color in the color set, set the value of the popup menu button to that color, and show a popup panel in which the color name and color value can be edited.
The Add Color popup panel
To set the color definition, use the color controls as described above.
To name the new color, simply type the new name in the edit field. The standard convention in Comic Strip Factory is to name colors for what they will be used for, like Skin or Hair or Shoes. It is also suggested to only use colors in objects that match these names, and if you want to use the same color for a totally different purpose, make a new named color. This allows global color replacement without unintended side effects.
Editing color sets
You can edit all the color set colors in a document with the Document Colors command in the Edit menu. You can also use the Colors command on the toolbar. A color set window will open.
This is the color set window for a comic document. If you use the Document Colors command on a parts document, it will look the same but without the Color set popup since there is only one color set in a parts document.
This window shows you the contents of one color set at a time. In the comic document version, you can use the Color set popup button to choose which color set to display. In this window, all changes you make are applied immediately, so there is no OK or Cancel button. You can close it with the close box when you are done.
Note that the color popups contain three colors at the top that do not appear in the color set editor: None, Black, and White. These colors are shared with all color sets and cannot be edited, moved, or deleted.
Rearranging color sets
You can change the order in which colors will appear in the color popup menus by dragging items up and down within this list.
Deleting colors
You can delete a color form this list by selecting it and clicking the delete button. If the color is not used, it will be deleted immediately. If it is used in the document, however, a dialog will appear allowing you to choose a color to replace it with everywhere it is used.
Renaming colors
You can rename a color by selecting it in the list, then clicking inside the name. When the name is displayed as editable text, you can just type in the new name. Color names must be unique within a color set. If the name you enter is already in use in the set, a number will be appended to it.
Editing a color
Click in the color swatch to the left of the color name in the list to edit a color. The color editor popup will appear to the left to allow you to edit the color.
If you edit a color for a character or background in a comic, it will be changed everywhere it appears in that comic. It does not affect the original parts file in the catalog or other comics that have used parts from that file.
This feature can very useful if you want a character wearing different color clothing (or hair, or skin, or other elements) than usual in a particular comic. Fred Nerd’s glasses have a color just for the lenses, so you can globally change him to be wearing sunglasses or rose-colored glasses, for example. Or you can give him a solid-colored shirt by making Top1 and Top 2 the same color.
If you want a permanent version of a catalog parts file to use in multiple comics with an altered color set, you can make an editable copy of the file in the catalog (see Managing your catalog ) and change the colors in that copy. If you want to be able to use both the altered version and the original in the same comic, you should use Properties in the File menu on the altered copy to modify the name of the character or background. Otherwise one copy’s colors will override the other’s in the comic.
Fred Nerd of Mars