portable color for artists, designers and developers
Screenshots
features
- choose colors directly from photos and other images stored on your BlackBerry® PlayBook™
- provides color in many different formats for ultimate flexibility in design, art and applications
- includes over 1,500 named colors, including traditional artist pigments
- export to standardized XML, Adobe® Swatch Exchange (.ase) or Corel® Painter™ Color Set (.colors) files
- code ready strings ready for CSS3 available in the XML export
- interface and interaction designed specifically for touch and tablets with your colors as the focus
- automatic session save and restore; never lose your work
Support
Documentation
Touch Gestures
- tap: touch the screen and lift your finger quickly
- long touch: touch the screen and hold your finger down for half of a second
- touch & drag: touch the screen and move your finger in any direction while still touching the screen
- flick or swipe: touch the screen and move your finger quickly in any direction, then lift your finger while still moving
- top swipe: touch the PlayBook’s frame above the screen and drag your finger down into the screen
The Interface
- the tools panel is located on the left
- the swatch panel is on the right
- in the swatch menu, the format bar is at the top and the actions bar is at the bottom
- show the application menu by doing a top swipe
- scroll panels and lists on-screen with the touch & drag gesture
- select list items by tapping the lower half of the item
- active tools, options or actions are always highlighted
- dismiss active menus by tapping anywhere outside the menu
The Tools Panel
The tools panel holds all the tools used to manipulate the work area of colorbranch. Individual tools may change from screen to screen (as colorbranch grows), but they will always relate to the work area and the task at hand.
hide button
tap to hide the tools panel temporarily
pan tool
touch & drag to move the work area without creating color points
dropper tool
tap the work area to create a color point
quick add tool
tap the work area to create a color point and a color swatch
import button
tap to import an image to the work area and clear all unlocked color points
revert button
tap to clear all unlocked color points from the work area
long touch to clear all locked and unlocked color points from the work area
show tools button
tap to show the tools panel
The Swatch Panel
The swatch panel is like a permanent clipboard (permanent until you clear it, that is). It holds all of your chosen colors and makes them accessible throughout the app. Swatches can be exported for use in your favorite graphics and digital painting software. An XML export may be used either as a reference or as a data source for any web or desktop application. All exports are saved to the Documents folder of your PlayBook.
format bar
tap a format name to change the swatch panel’s display
touch & drag to see more selectable formats
swatches
touch & drag to scroll the swatch list
tap a single swatch to select or deselect
actions bar
tap the icons to open menus and manipulate the swatch list
delete button
tap to show options to remove selected swatches or to clear all swatches
export button
tap to show swatch export options for Adobe Swatch Exchange, Corel Painter Color Set or colorbranch XML
hide swatches button
tap to hide the swatch panel temporarily
show swatches button
tap to show the swatch panel
Color Points
Color points are used to mark and choose colors in colorbranch. They are linked to swatches by their common color, but are temporary in nature, whereas swatches are meant to be more permanent.
For example, if a color point is not locked, and it is moved, the point will change colors and will change the color of its linked swatch. However, deleting a color point will not delete its linked swatch from the swatch list. Likewise, deleting a swatch does not delete its color point.
color point
tap the work area with the dropper tool or quick add tool selected to create a new color point
touch & drag to position a color point within the work area or to fine-tune the color of the point and its linked swatch
touch & drag locked color points to compare the point’s color and a color within the loaded image
color point with preview
the preview swatch will show above the point any time the color point is moving
long touch the point with the menu open or closed to show the preview swatch without moving the point
lift your finger from the screen to hide the preview and return the color point to its previous state
Technical Support
For technical support by email, please do not use the general contact form. Instead, email support directly with the address listed in BlackBerry App World. Include as much information as possible. “It doesn’t work,” is not enough to tell what is happening and will not help solve the problem.
Support via telephone is not available.
Color Conversions
All color conversions are based on a RGB color values, in which 255 is the maximum value of any one channel. 255 is not evenly divisible by 360 or 100 which is needed for the conversions to HSL, HSV/HSB, CMY and CMYK. As a result, the final values are not whole numbers. For display in the swatches panel, these are rounded to one or no decimal places, meaning they are approximated, not exact. Attempting to convert from any format back to RGB will not return the original RGB value.
The CMY and CMYK are straight conversions (as are all of the others). They are not calibrated in any way for print and should not be used or relied on as accurate for printing. These conversions are provided for approximating on-screen subtractive color mixing and also as a reference for more traditional color mixing based on an artist’s color wheel where the primary colors are Red (Magenta + Yellow), Yellow and Blue (Magenta + Cyan).
Color Names
While colorbranch does include 1,500+ color names, there are over 16.5 million possible RGB colors. This means that up to 11,000 individual, yet similar colors, may share the same name in the swatch panel.
