Embird Embroidery Software
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Color Palette Menu (Manager)

Color palette can be assigned to a design. To change colors in palette, double-click on color box shown near the bottom of preview image. Dialog box will appear, and color may be changed. Popup menu is displayed when clicking on color box with right mouse button. Current color palette can be saved to hard disk for future use.

Understanding Colors in Embird

Embird supports many embroidery formats. Many of them are industrial - such as Melco .EXP, Tajima .DST or Pfaff .KSM. Unlike home embroidery formats, the industrial formats do not store color palette together with stitches in a single file. In fact, they do not store any color palette at all. Therefore, if you display a .DST design, it will be shown in wrong colors, using the default color palette.

We wanted to give you the option to change the colors of designs in industrial embroidery formats - and then save the new color palette to hard disk. The next time you display the design, it will be with correct colors. However, as the .DST file cannot store the color palette, this palette must be saved into a separate file. So, we added a support for a file with the .EDR extension. If you have the SQUIRREL.DST file and save the color palette, it will be stored in the SQUIRREL.EDR file (unless you change its name). When you display the file again, Embird uses the color palette, or .EDR file, you saved in the same folder as the design. If Embird does not find any, it uses the default color palette.

The situation with home embroidery formats is different: They do store the correct colors together with stitches in a single file. So, when Embird tries to find the .EDR file and it does not find any, it will use the palette stored in the design itself. The colors are correct now, because the .PES file contains the color palette. So it might seem that .EDR files are useless for home embroidery formats. However, in several situations they can still be helpful. The reason is simple: Home embroidery formats have limited color palettes, so you cannot have any color from the TrueColor color palette. And sometimes you might want the possibility to specify any TrueColor color, not only a color from the limited palette. This might be helpful in printing. However, if you do not want to have support for .EDR files, you can switch off the Support Palette Files (*.edr) option in Options menu.

In other words: If the .EDR file with the same name as the design is stored in the same folder, and the Support Palette Files (*.edr) option is ON, the color palette from this file will be used instead of the color palette stored in the design itself. The .EDR files are created in Embird Editor automatically every time you save the design and the above option is ON, or in Embird Manager when you choose Save As command (see below).

The default color palette is a palette Embird uses when displaying a design stored in industrial embroidery format. When you display a file in home embroidery format, it should be shown in correct colors.

Color Palette Menu and Popup Menu Commands:

Thread Catalogs

Browse through built-in and custom catalogs. Each thread in catalog has Mark attribute, which can be set to ON/OFF. This allows you to mark some threads, e.g. those threads you have in your stock. See also Show Marked Threads Only option below. It is possible to edit existing catalogs, or to create new thread catalog.

Show Marked Threads Only

If you set this option to ON, then Embird will display only those threads, which are marked.

Load

Open previously saved color palette.

Save As

Save current color palette. Save color palette to the same folder, with the same filename as corresponding design file but with .EDR extension. Such color palette would be auto-loaded when displaying design next time.

Save Palette As Type

Choose how the color palette should be saved: as Embird .EDR file (recommended), or as Color File .RGB or as Text File .TXT.

Animate Color Changes

Enable/disable the animation of selected color. If ON, the selected color in displayed design will blink on screen, allowing you to recognise it easily.

Remember Background Color

If ON, the chosen background color will be saved and used as default background color when displaying designs which do not have color palette stored in corresponding .EDR, .RGB or .TXT file.

Change Animation Color

Change color used for animation, default is red color.

Change Background Color

Change background color.

Choose Background Fabric

Choose the fabric shown in background in 3D photorealistic view mode.

Change Color

Select new color from Windows color palette. The same as double clicking on color box.

Change Color Everywhere

Choose new color from Windows color palette, and change selected color and all identical colors in the design at once.

Change Color Everywhere using Catalog

Choose new color from built-in thread catalogs and change selected color and all identical colors in the design at once.

Choose Color from Catalog

Select new color from built-in thread catalogs.

Choose Color from Palette

Select new color from limited color palette available for particular embroidery machine.

Choose Color from History

Select new color from history list, which contains colors you have assigned before. This command may be helpful if you have a design with e.g. 110 thread changes, but there are just 8 different colors. Instead of browsing through thread catalogs again and again and searching for one of these 8 colors, you can use the history list.

Change Several Colors

Change several colors in palette in once.

Pick Color

Pick color from image displayed on Middle Panel. Use left mouse button to copy the color under mouse pointer to focused color box. Use right mouse button to focus next color box.

Set Default Colors

Set default color palette.

Find Color in Catalog

Search for color name and number in built-in thread catalogs.

Apply Changes Immediately

Set this option to ON if you want to apply the changes in colors immediately, i.e. without clicking on Apply Color Changes button.

Apply Color Changes

Force refreshing of design image. All color changes take effect on screen. To store them permanently, you must save the color palette (see the Save As command above).

Restore Color Palette Automatically

Set this option to OFF if you do not want Embird to automatically load (restore) the color palette when you are printing and exporting designs. This might be helpful if you have several color palettes prepared for a single design, and you want to manually load (using Load command - see above) and then print or export the documentation using these various color palettes.

Restore Color Palette

Restore color palette. This will ignore all changes in color palette and restore colors before changes.