Swatches panel

A categorised, named colour library you click to fill, stroke or drop into a gradient stop.

Swatches holds named colours grouped into categories, separate from the Color panel's history and favourites. It ships with a starter library and you can add, sort, import and export your own.

Opening it#

Open it from Window ▸ Swatches. It is on by default. The Category combo at the top switches which set of chips is showing.

Applying a swatch#

Left-click a swatch to apply it. It updates whichever Color panel slot is currently active, and writes into the selection to match: if a gradient stop is selected the colour goes into that stop, otherwise Color 1 active means the fill changes and Color 2 active means the stroke does, on every selected shape, in one undo step. Middle-click a swatch to delete it; there is no confirmation and no undo for a deletion. Hover a swatch for a preview and its RGB values.

List, grid and card views#

The burger menu carries a View submenu with List, Grid and Card, and toggles Show Name under or beside each chip. Chip size has four steps: Small, Mid, Large and Extra Large, with Large as the default.

Card view is a printed sheet rather than a grid of buttons: the chips butt straight up against each other, the column width is snapped so the last card in a row ends flush with the right edge, and the name and hex are printed ON the colour instead of under it. The ink flips between dark and light to stay readable on the chip it sits on, and on a gradient it is sampled where the label actually falls rather than at the average. There is no tooltip in this view, because everything a tooltip would say is already on the card.

Categories#

• Create New Category: opens a name prompt; the new category becomes active
• Rename Category: renames the active category
• Duplicate Category: copies it, appending " Copy" to the name
• Delete Category: asks first, naming the category and how many swatches go with it, then removes it. There is no undo
• Sort by ▸ Name or Hue: reorders the active category in place

Adding colours#

Add from Active Color appends a new swatch named "New Color": it takes the colour from the fill of the primary selected shape, not from the Color panel's active slot, so with a stroke colour active or nothing selected it will not add what you expect. To push the Color panel's active slot instead, use Add to Swatches on the Color panel's own options menu.

Gradient swatches#

A swatch can hold a whole gradient ramp, not just a flat colour. It stores the same fill type the document uses, so clicking one is the same edit the Properties panel makes: the ramp drops straight into the shape with no conversion step in between.

Add Gradient from Fill captures the fill of the selected shape, or its stroke when Color 2 is the active slot. It is greyed out until that slot actually carries a gradient. The stops are sorted by position on the way in, and what is stored is the DIRECTION rather than the handle positions, because the ramp has to re-fit whatever shape it lands on next.

Clicking a gradient swatch replaces the whole fill or stroke. Handles you have already placed survive a swap between two ramps of the same kind; they are re-seeded only when the fill arrives from a solid or from a different kind, where the gradient would otherwise land collapsed. A shape with no fill gets one.

Importing and exporting#

Import Swatches opens a file dialog and replaces the whole library with the chosen JSON file. Export Swatches saves the current library, defaulting to the name swatches.json. The format is a JSON object of named categories, each holding named colours stored as #AARRGGBB hex, alpha first.

What ships with Celas Studio#

Eleven categories, 408 entries, of which 48 are gradients.

Your library persists. On exit Celas Studio writes it to swatches_library.json in the application data folder, and on the next launch it reads that copy instead of the shipped starter library, so categories you create, swatches you add and swatches you delete all survive a restart, along with the view options (list, grid or card, chip size, active category).