WeaveMaker User's Manual — Creating Color

Color Overview
Bringing colors into a fabric is a two-step process in WeaveMaker.

Step 1 (Palette)
Colors are created, named, and edited (matched) in a Palette file, a type of WeaveMaker file devoted exclusively to color. Once defined in a palette, a color may be conveniently used in many different fabrics.

Step 2 (Colorway)
To use color in a fabric, the desired colors are dragged from a palette file into the fabric’s colorway window (see “Color Dragging” for more about this). From the colorway, colors are assigned to individual threads in the warp and weft either manually (using the color crayon) or automatically (using the cornucopia tool).

The Challenge of Color
Achieving a precise color match between the computer screen and the printed page is difficult. Matching both the screen and printed color to a yarn sample is especially challenging.

WeaveMaker’s approach to color makes this process manageable and effective, although it does not make it trivial.

For professional results with a minimum of effort, carefully construct a color palette before putting colors into a fabric. Scattering ill-defined colors (ones which are not correctly screen/print matched, or which are unnamed) through a library of fabrics creates a difficult color management challenge, and will inevitable lead to errors which, if they reach to the mill, will have disastrous consequences.

It is especially important to assign meaningful names to your colors. WeaveMaker tracks colors by the names you give them, and by the names of the palette files in which they are stored. If you thoughtfully assign color names, then any color you see in a fabric can be easily and reliably traced back to a color chip within a palette.

Palettes
A WeaveMaker palette is a color database in which you can create, name, match, and save colors. A palette is quite separate from and independent of any fabric you design. Colors you define in a palette will probably wind up being used in many different fabrics. Colors defined in a palette become associated with a specific fabric when they are moved into that fabric’s colorway window (see “Color Dragging” for details).

A color definition consists of several kinds of information:

Screen color. This is a set of red/green/blue (or hue/saturation/ value) numbers which cause the computer to correctly display the color on your monitor.

Printer color. This is a set of red/green/blue (or HSV) numbers which cause your printer to print the same color as appears on the screen. Rarely if ever would these printer values be identical with the screen values.

Color name. This is the name you use to describe the color.

Technical Description. This is a description you can send to a mill or dyer so they correctly match your color when they produce yarn.

Group Codes (up to 3 per color). These are codes you assign to the color. Group codes are completely arbitrary. You may use them (or not) as you wish.

For example, if you have some colors which are to be used for wall coverings and others to be used on the floor, you could group code all the wall colors as “W” and all the floor colors as “F.” This still leaves the second and third group codes available for some other use. You might therefore use the second group code to tag all reds as “R” and all blues as “B.” You might then use the group three codes as, for example, “C” for cool colors and “W” for warm colors.

WeaveMaker uses these codes to group and sort colors, which can help you quickly locate the right color within a palette. So, you could ask to see all the colors which are for use on walls, or all the reds, or all the warm colors. You may define as many palettes as you wish. Any two palettes can be simultaneously available (display on screen) within WeaveMaker. A given fabric can draw its colors from as many different palettes as necessary.

Once you define a color, WeaveMaker keeps its description intact wherever you use it. This means in particular that the printer color codes are always kept associated with their corresponding screen color. Thus, careful construction and calibration of colors within a palette will pay off when it comes time to print fabric samples.

Creating a Palette
A palette is displayed and edited in a Palette window (see illustration below). Select New Palette in the File menu to start defining a new palette.

A new palette window will be displayed. It contains two permanent colors, black and white. These colors will always be the first two colors in the palette.

To define a new color, click the word “Add” at the bottom of the palette window. A window appears that allows you to assign attributes to your new color.

Click on "color wheel" and the Color Picker window will be displayed (similar to the illustration below).

The Color Picker has a color box that displays hue and saturation simultaneously. The scrollbar at the right controls the brightness (value) of the entire box.

Click in the color box and move the mouse around while holding down the mouse button. Notice that the color in the rectangle just below the box changes continually to show you the color you are defining. Move the brightness slider down to add black to the color (decrease brightness) or towards the top to remove black.

If you know a specific set of “color numbers” for the color you wish to define, type them directly into the HSL (hue/saturation/ lumens) or RGB (red/green/ blue) text fields.

Once you have defined the exact color you want, click the OK button. The Color Picker window disappears, and WeaveMaker adds the new color to the palette.

You can immediately use this new color in a fabric. However, your new color is not yet completely defined. It is only a screen color: it lacks a name, a description, and it has not yet been color matched to your printer. Some suggestions:

If you are working at a rough design stage, and approximate colors are good enough, then it should be sufficient to define a palette of screen colors. This is particularly true if the colors you are using are far apart in appearance (that is, they can be distinguished strictly by how they look on the screen).

If you have colors which are close together in appearance, at the very least you should name each of them. You can then use the names to double-check yourself if you have trouble distinguishing close colors.

If you are using colors which must be accurate, especially if they must print accurately, you should finish the printer color matching (described below) before using the colors in a fabric.
Having said all that, however, it is worth noting that you can define colors in any order you wish. WeaveMaker does not impose a requirement that colors be defined in any specific order or way. You can start by roughly defining your colors, then add names as that becomes appropriate, and leave printer color matching (for example) for last. It is slightly more work to take the latter approach, and there is substantially greater risk of making mistakes, but you can try various approaches to defining colors to see what fits best with your working style.
Naming Colors
To name a color, click in the “Name” box to the right of the screen color you are naming (see illustration below). Similarly, click in the “Technical Data” box to enter a technical description of the color.
Colors which do not have full descriptions (name and technical data) have a dashed diagonal line through them as illustrated to the left.
Color Matching
When you first define a screen color, the corresponding printer color is set equal to the screen color. In an ideal world, this would insure that the printer printed a color which exactly matched the screen color. However, real printers (and real video displays) are imperfect devices. In practice it is usually necessary to send a different color value to the printer than is sent to the screen. Color matching, then, involves finding the right combinations of color values so displayed and printed colors closely match each other. The first step in color matching is to print the entire palette. Use the Print Palette command in the File menu. For newly-defined colors, the color values sent to the printer will be identical to the screen values you have defined.
Next, examine the printed palette. Some of the printed colors will be close to correct, while others will be remarkably wrong. To get a better color match, work with one problem color at a time. The overall strategy involves having WeaveMaker print a set of color chips, each slightly different from the target color (WeaveMaker calculates a set of RGB values each differing slightly from the ones used to print the problem color). You then inspect these printed color chips and pick the one which looks closest to what you want. You then use the RGB values for that chip as the new printer values. The procedure is diagrammed below.

Use the Print Options dialog to tell WeaveMaker to print variations on a single color rather than printing the entire palette (see illustration on the next page).
Once you have achieved a color match between the screen and color, WeaveMaker will remember the correspondence. Whenever you drag that particular screen color into a fabric colorway or another palette file, the printer color goes along with it. Whenever you print a fabric containing this color, WeaveMaker automatically substitutes the printer color for the screen color when sending color information to the printer. This is one reason it is important to correctly define your colors before using them in a fabric— there is no easy way, after a period of time, to examine a color chip and ascertain whether its printer color codes are correctly set.
Using Color
Once you have built a palette, its colors may be used within fabrics. A color is moved from a palette into a fabric colorway by dragging a color chip from the Palette window into the Colorway window (see below), and then, from the colorway, assignments are made to individual thread colors.

The palette display can be changed to a more compact form in which just the screen color chips are shown. Click the left display button at the bottom of the palette window (). This palette format minimizes the amount of screen space used by the palette window, and is very convenient for selecting colors and dragging them into the colorway window.
Sorting Colors
Colors within a palette can be sorted by clicking any of the sorting buttons (see “Sort Colors” in the illustration at the bottom of this page). Note that permanent black and white (the first two colors in every palette) do not participate in sorting. G1,G2,G3 - sort into alphabetical order by group codes. For example, clicking G1 sorts all the palette color chips so that their G1 codes are in ascending alphabetical (or numeric) order.
N - sort into alphabetical order by color names.
T - sort into alphabetical order by technical description. If you have assigned technical codes from any of several commercially- available color classification systems, this sort order will likely also sort the colors into a useful visual order.
Red/Green/Blue button - sort the color chips into hue order. Color chips with a low hue number (pure red, for example, has zero hue in WeaveMaker’s numbering system) will appear at the front. This will be followed by colors of blue hue and on into the greens.
Note that some reds have high hues (reddish purples are a good example) and so will come last, while others (with a slightly orange cast) have low hue numbers and so come near the front.
You will thus see “reds” at both the front and the rear of the sort order.
Light Gray/Dark Gray - sort the color chips by brightness (amount of black). Low bright-ness color chips come to the front.
Red/Pink - sort the color chips by saturation. Low saturation colors (those nearest to the center of the color wheel) come to the front.
Editing Colors
To edit an existing color in a palette, double click either on a palette color chip or on a set of RGB numbers (see illustration below).
Warning! Editing a color in the palette does just that: it edits the color in the palette. It does not edit the color in the design. To edit a color within a design, first edit it in the Palette window, and then drag the new color into the Colorway window of the design.