Swatches
The Swatches panel (Window > Swatches) is where you build named color palettes for a document, use them as a one-click color switcher while painting, and drag or paste colors to and from any color control in the app. You can also reach it from the small palette icon beside the Paint toolbar’s color chip.
Swatches never opens on its own just because you selected a Paint node, and it never rearranges a layout that already has it docked somewhere.
Painting with swatches
Section titled “Painting with swatches”When a Paint node is your active target, the panel’s context strip names it directly (for example “Brush color for Paint 3”) with a chip showing its current color. Click any swatch and that node’s brush color changes immediately, as one undo step. With no Paint node active, clicking a swatch only selects it.
A click always means exactly one of those two things. There is no “last color field you touched” memory, and starting a drag never behaves differently because you clicked something else first.
Paint’s brush color is bounded RGB with no alpha, so applying a swatch that carries alpha or an out-of-range color ignores the alpha and clamps the RGB, with a brief notice if anything actually changed. Mask Paint has no color of its own, so it never activates click-to-apply.
Any color you can drag, whether a swatch, a Recent or Document color, or the Paint toolbar’s color chip, can also be dropped onto a gradient bar on the Gradient, Gradient Map, and Palette From Gradient nodes. Dropping on empty space along the bar adds a stop there; dropping on an existing stop’s handle recolors that stop. A gradient holds at most 8 stops.
Building a palette
Section titled “Building a palette”A new document starts with no palettes and opens showing the built-in Color Wheel library, so you always have colors on hand. Create your first palette with the + button beside the palette selector, import one, pin a Recent or Document color, or click Add to Document to copy the open built-in library.
Add colors by:
- clicking the dashed + tile, which opens the color editor seeded from your last-used color;
- dragging any color parameter’s swatch into a group;
- right-clicking a color parameter and choosing Add to Swatches;
- pasting one or more colors from the clipboard;
- pinning a Recent or Document color;
- importing a palette file or a Palette node’s output.
Double-click a swatch (or press F2) to reopen the editor. It accepts a picker, a name, and exact text entry: hex, #RRGGBBAA, or linear(r, g, b, a) for overbright or negative values a hex code cannot represent.
Drag a swatch within the grid to reorder it or move it into another group; hold Ctrl while dragging to duplicate it at the drop point instead. Right-click a swatch or a multi-selection for Edit, Duplicate, Move to Group, Send to Node, Export Selection to File, and Delete.
Every add, edit, delete, reorder, rename, or bulk import is a single undo step and marks the document as changed. None of it affects any node’s output or forces a re-cook, so editing your palettes is free until you explicitly apply or send a color to the graph.
Sorting
Section titled “Sorting”The overflow menu’s Sort by submenu reorders the swatches within each group, leaving group order alone, each as one undo step:
| Order | Result |
|---|---|
| Name | Alphabetical, ignoring case |
| Hue | Around the color wheel; grays and near-neutrals come first, ordered dark to light |
| Lightness | Dark to light |
| Saturation | Least to most saturated |
Built-in libraries
Section titled “Built-in libraries”The palette selector lists a catalog of bundled libraries below your own document palettes, under four headings:
| Group | Libraries |
|---|---|
| Essentials | Color Wheel (neutrals, a full saturated hue wheel, tints and shades, every color plainly named), Neutral Grays, Warm & Cool Neutrals |
| General Purpose | Crayon Box (sixteen familiar colors), Pastels, Earth & Nature, Neon Accents, Portrait Tones (skin starting points across warm, neutral, and cool undertones, plus hair colors) |
| Standards | Web Basic 16 (the basic named CSS colors at their exact values) and Okabe-Ito (eight colors chosen to stay distinguishable under color vision deficiency) |
| Pixel Art | A curated set of popular pixel-art palettes |
Every library carries a one-line description of what it is for; hover it in the selector or read its header once open. The selector is a visual picker: each row shows a small color strip alongside the name and count, so you recognize a palette by its colors. Whichever palette or library you have selected is remembered in the document.
Selecting a library switches the panel into a read-only view: click a color to paint with it and drag a color out to any control, exactly like a document swatch, but with no editing, reordering, or deleting. Right-click any built-in color for Copy or Add to Active Palette, which appends just that color (keeping its authored name) to your current palette as one undo step.
To make a whole library editable, click Add to Document beside the read-only header, or choose Copy to Document Palettes from the overflow menu. Built-in libraries are part of the app, not the document, so they are always available and nothing about them is saved into your file.
Looking for a smooth ramp like a heatmap or a sunset? Those are gradient presets rather than swatch libraries. Add a Palette From Gradient node, pick the preset, and it samples the ramp into a palette at whatever color count you choose.
Keyboard use
Section titled “Keyboard use”The grid is fully usable without a mouse once the panel has focus. Click anything in it once, or Tab to it from elsewhere.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Move the focus highlight through the grid |
Enter | Apply the focused swatch (same rule as a click) |
Space | Toggle the focused swatch in the multi-selection |
F2 | Rename or edit the focused swatch |
Delete / Backspace | Delete the selection, or the focused swatch |
Ctrl+C | Copy the selection to the clipboard |
Ctrl+V | Paste one or more colors into the focused group |
Escape | Close the open dialog, or clear the focus in a built-in library |
In a built-in library only the read-only keys apply: arrows, Enter, Ctrl+C, and Escape. The editing keys do nothing there.
A small checkmark badge marks your current brush color. It stays on that swatch even after you switch palettes or clear a selection, and disappears the moment the brush color changes some other way. A multi-selection is shown by the highlight border alone, regardless of the swatch’s own color.
Recent Colors and Document Colors
Section titled “Recent Colors and Document Colors”Two collapsed-by-default sections sit below the swatch grid:
- Recent Colors remembers up to 24 colors you have actually committed, whether applied to Paint, dropped onto a parameter, or sampled with the eyedropper, newest first. Previewing a color in a picker never adds an entry. Clearing it never touches any document.
- Document Colors is derived automatically from every explicit color already authored somewhere in the graph (parameters, gradient stops, Palette node slots, Paint colors), with the source and usage count in each tooltip. It never scans image pixels, and only rebuilds while the section is open.
When a Paint target is active, clicking a tile in either section paints with that color. Both also support dragging a color out, copying it, and Pin to Active Palette to add it as a normal editable swatch.
Working with Palette nodes
Section titled “Working with Palette nodes”Import from Node turns a complete, evaluated output from a Palette, Palette From Image, or Palette From Gradient node into a new document palette, along with a record of where it came from. It is disabled while that node’s output is not ready, and never reads a stale or failed result.
If the source node’s output later changes, a Source changed badge appears, offering Replace from Source (which asks first if you have edited the palette locally), Merge from Source (add only what is not already there), or Import as New Palette. Deleting the source node leaves the palette you already imported working normally.
Send to Node does the reverse, writing your active palette, a single group, or your current selection into a new or existing Palette node. It encodes each color to 8-bit and reports up front if anything will lose precision. A Palette node holds at most 64 colors; sending a larger palette asks you to choose selected colors only, the current group, the first 64, or an automatic split across several nodes. It never silently drops colors.
The Palette node has a matching shortcut on its own side: a From Swatches… button in its Parameters panel, next to Import and Export, opens this same palette list (your document palettes, then the built-in libraries, with the active one highlighted), and picking one replaces the node’s slots with that palette’s colors. It is a copy, not a link, so editing the swatches afterwards does not touch the node. Palettes over 64 colors copy the first 64 and say so; use Send to Node when you need to choose which colors go or split them across several nodes.
Palette files
Section titled “Palette files”Import File and Export File read and write the same formats as the Palette node: GPL, ASE, and PAL for both, plus Aseprite for import. Importing offers Import as New Palette or Merge into Active. Exporting shows a loss summary first if any color needs clipping, 8-bit quantization, or its alpha dropped, so nothing is silently altered on the way out. Dropping a palette file directly onto the panel imports it there.
Color values and preview
Section titled “Color values and preview”Every swatch stores an exact linear color that can be negative or over 1.0, the same range Curves, Levels, and other 32-bit controls use. That stored value never changes on its own.
In 32-bit (float) mode, the overflow menu’s Display section offers a Preview in Document View checkbox that changes only how swatches are displayed: off (the default, matching hex codes and palette files) or on (through your current display setup). Switching your monitor, working space, or display view never rewrites a swatch and never marks the document as changed. Outside 32-bit mode the two would look identical, so the checkbox does not appear.
A swatch’s tooltip shows its name, its exact linear(r, g, b, a) value, a hex code when the color is representable in 8 bits, its alpha, and its source if it was imported. Swatch tiles come in Small, Medium (the default), and Large, chosen from the same Display section.