Working with Web Palettes in Photoshop

John Weise
Digital Media Solutions
Office of Instruction Technology
University of Michigan

These instructions are for Adobe Photoshop 3.0x and may or my not be applicable to other versions.

The Browser Safe Palette

The Browser Safe Palette contains the 216 colors that are common to the system palettes of the Macintosh and Windows operating systems. It is used by Netscape Navigator, Mosaic, and Internet Explorer.

Colors of the Browser Safe Palette
The 216 colors of the Browser Safe Palette

Download the Browser Safe Palette for Windows. The palette can be loaded into Photoshop's swatches so that the colors can be used while creating images.

Loading the Browser Safe Palette into Photshop's Swatches

  1. Open Photoshop
  2. Select the Windows/Palettes/Show Swatches menu item
  3. In the Swatches floating palette, select Load Swatches from the pop-up menu
  4. Locate and open the palette file that you downloaded.
    • For Macintosh, the filename is newCLUT.1
    • For Windows, the filename is BCLUT2.ACT
  5. To use a swatch color with a Photoshop tool, simply click on the color to make it the foreground color, and then use the tool as normal.

Remapping an Image to the Browser Safe Palette

  1. Open Photoshop with the image to be remapped.
  2. From the Mode menu, select the Indexed Color... menu item.
    • Click OK if asked "Flatten layers?"
  3. In the Indexed Color dialog, select palette Custom... and dither None.
  4. In the Color Table dialog, click the Load... button.
  5. Locate and open the palette file that you downloaded.
    • For Macintosh, the filename is newCLUT.1
    • For Windows, the filename is BCLUT2.ACT
  6. In the Color Table dialog, click OK.
    • The image has now been remapped.
  7. From the File menu, select the Save a Copy... menu item.
  8. From the Format pop-up menu, select the CompuServe GIF menu item.
  9. Give the file a name different than the original, otherwise the full color version will be lost. Use the .GIF file extension if the image will be put on the Web.

Remapping an Image to an Adaptive Palette

  1. Open Photoshop with the image to be remapped.
  2. From the Mode menu, select the Indexed Color... menu item.
    • Click OK if asked "Flatten layers?"
  3. In the Indexed Color dialog, select palette Adaptive and dither Diffusion.
    • To reduce the image to a specific number of colors, 256 or less, such as 64 or 128, enter the appropriate number in the Other option of the Resolution section.
  4. In the Indexed Color dialog, click OK.
  5. From the File menu, select the Save a Copy... menu item.
  6. From the Format pop-up menu, select the CompuServe GIF menu item.
  7. Give the file a name different than the original, otherwise the full color version will be lost. Use the .GIF file extension if the image will be put on the Web.

Using Adobe's GIF89a Export Plug-in

Adobe has released a free export plug-in that expands the options for saving GIF files from PhotoShop. The GIF89a Export Plug-in supports interlacing, transparency, adaptive, and custom palettes. The transparency feature is rather elegant, and allows the background color of the destination page to be specified. Additionally, it eliminates the step of switching to indexed color before saving.

Please send comments to John Weise (jweise@umich.edu)
Created: April 26, 1996. Last Modified: Friday, 16-Aug-1996 15:57:50 EDT
URL: http:// www.oit.itd.umich.edu/projects/DMS/answers/colorguide/HowPalPhotoshop.html