anypalette

AnyPalette.js

There are a LOT of different types of palette files.

ONE LIBRARY SHALL RULE THEM ALL

Let's load some palettes

Features

AnyPalette.js has a single interface for all formats, so you can load any of the supported file types with one call, and it'll choose an appropriate parser to use automatically.

It can even load from files that aren't intended specifically as palettes, but that have CSS-style color values in them (.css, .html, .svg, .js, etc.)

Works in Node.js and in the browser.

Supported palette formats:

File Extension	Name	Programs	Read	Write
.pal	RIFF Palette	MS Paint for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0	✅	Planned
.gpl	GIMP Palette	Gimp, Inkscape, Krita, KolourPaint, Scribus, CinePaint, MyPaint	✅	Planned
.txt	Paint.NET Palette	Paint.NET	✅	Planned
.act	Adobe Color Table	Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator	✅	Planned
.pal, .psppalette	Paint Shop Pro Palette	Paint Shop Pro (Jasc Software / Corel)	✅	Planned
.hpl	Homesite Palette	Allaire Homesite / Macromedia ColdFusion	✅
.cs	ColorSchemer	ColorSchemer Studio	✅*	Planned
.pal	Starcraft Palette	Starcraft	✅
.wpe	Starcraft Terrain Palette	Starcraft	✅
.sketchpalette	Sketch Palette	Sketch	✅	Planned
.spl	Skencil Palette	Skencil (formerly called Sketch)	✅
.colors	KolourPaint Color Collection	KolourPaint	✅
.colors	Plasma Desktop Color Scheme	KDE Plasma Desktop	✅
.theme	Windows Theme	Windows Desktop	✅
.themepack	Windows Theme	Windows Desktop	✅

*The ColorSchemer file parser is only enabled when the file extension is .cs, provided by passing a File object, or options.fileName, or options.fileExt, or options.filePath

UNSUPPORTED palette formats (for now):

File Extension	Name	Programs	Read	Write
.gpa	Gpick Palette	Gpick	Planned
.aco	Adobe Color Swatches	Adobe Photoshop	Planned	Planned
.ase	Adobe Swatch Exchange	Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator	Planned	Planned
.acbl	Adobe Color Book Library / Legacy	Adobe InDesign and Illustrator	Planned	Planned
.soc	StarOffice Colors	StarOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice	Planned	Planned

Picking colors from an image can be done by other libraries, like vibrant.js/node-vibrant

License

MIT-licensed, see LICENSE

Install

For Node.js / Webpack / Parcel / Rollup / Browserify:

npm i anypalette --save

Then access the library with:

const AnyPalette = require("anypalette");

Alternatively, download build/anypalette.js and include it as a script:

<script src="anypalette.js"></script>

This will create a global AnyPalette

This library uses UMD, so you can also load it with AMD or CommonJS (in which case it won't create a global).

API

See the changelog for upgrading. Properties and methods not documented here may break without notice.

AnyPalette.loadPalette(options, callback)

Knowing the file extension means AnyPalette.js can often pick the correct palette loader right away, which can improve the load speed, and also some loaders won't load except via their specific file extension because they can't determine if the file is actually in that format or not (for raw data formats without headers).

• options.file - the palette file to load, as a File
• options.data - the palette file data to load, as a binary string (not an ArrayBuffer/TypedArray/DataView)
• options.filePath - a path to a palette file, for Node.js usage
• options.fileName (optional) - the file name, if you have it, including the file extension - can be obtained from options.file or options.filePath
• options.fileExt (optional) - the file extension, if you have it, excluding the dot, e.g. "pal" - can be obtained from options.fileName or options.file or options.filePath
• callback(error, palette) (required) - called when palette loading is finished, either with an error (in the first argument) or a Palette (in the second)

Note: the callback is asynchronous to allow for file loading, but all the palette parsing is currently synchronous.

AnyPalette.loadPalette(file, callback)

Shortcut to load from a File - equivalent to passing {file: file} for options.

AnyPalette.loadPalette(filePath, callback)

Shortcut to load from a file path in Node.js - equivalent to passing {filePath: filePath} for options.

class Palette extends Array

(Accessible as AnyPalette.Palette)

Stores a list of Colors, with some additional data.

Because Palette is a subclass of Array, you can use forEach, map, join and other methods, or access the colors via indexing e.g. palette[0] and loop over them using palette.length

palette.withDuplicates

Some palette formats are commonly made variable size by just leaving unused slots a certain color such as #000 or #00F. So by default, duplicates are removed. You can get all duplicates with palette.withDuplicates (which is another Palette)

palette.numberOfColumns

palette.numberOfColumns may contain a number of columns for the palette to fit into (with the number of rows being implicit).
You should ignore an numberOfColumns of zero, and may want to ignore this property entirely.

Currently only GIMP palettes will have this specified, but geometry guessing is planned.

You should use palette.withDuplicates (and palette.withDuplicates.numberOfColumns) to work with file-specified geometry.

class Color

(Accessible as AnyPalette.Color)

Color has a toString method that returns a CSS color.
You can therefore pass a Color object directly to an element's style or a canvas's context.

var color = palette[0];
div.style.background = color;
ctx.fillStyle = color;

See Using JavaScript's 'toString' Method, which incidentally uses a Color class as an example.

Color objects also have r, g, b properties, OR h, s, l, depending on how they were loaded

Also for some palette formats, such as .gpl files, a Color may have a name (it's either a string or undefined)

Todo

• Save palettes to different formats. jBinary may be helpful.

• Load all the palettes!

  • Adobe Color files (.aco) used in Photoshop
  • Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) used in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign
  • Magica Voxel Palette (.png) - see MagicaVoxelPalettes for examples
  • macOS Color Palette (.clr)
  • Gpick Palette (.gpa)
  • Low priority
    • ASCII Color Format (.acf)
    • Binary Color Format (.bcf)
    • Alias/WaveFront Material (.mtl)
    • XML-based:
      • Adobe Color Book Legacy (.acbl)
      • AutoCAD Color Book (.acb)
      • QuarkXPress Color Library (.qcl)
      • Scribus (.xml)
      • sK1 (.skpx / .skp)
      • StarOffice / OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice (.soc)

• Guess palette geometries

• Load from a Buffer in Node.js, maybe even a Stream (altho streaming would mostly involve collecting it into a buffer), and from an ArrayBuffer in the browser

Contributing

Development Setup

• Install Node.js, if you don't already have it. (It comes with npm)

• Fork and clone the repository

• The repo has a git submodule, so in the repository folder run git submodule update --init

• Install dependencies with npm install

Development Workflow

npm start will start a server and open a page in your default browser; it'll rebuild the library when changes to the source files are detected, and it'll auto-reload the page

Run npm test to update a regression-data folder, and then view any changes with git.
If the changes are good/positive, that's good! Commit the changes along with the source code.
If the changes are bad/negative, try to fix the regression.

Don't commit build/anypalette.js until cutting a release (to reduce noise and avoid conflicts when reverting and such).

Update CHANGELOG.md's [Unreleased] section with any notable changes, following the Keep a Changelog format. Include any information someone upgrading the library might need to know.

When pulling changes (e.g. syncing a fork) you may need to npm install again to update the dependencies.

To cut a release

The process is currently something like this:

In CHANGELOG.md, replace the [Unreleased] section with the next version number (TODO: use update-changelog (altho it doesn't support links to commit ranges; this does, but it's for a different ecosystem), and update the build within npm version)

npm run build
npm test
git diff tests/ # there shouldn't be changes to the test data at this point, that should ideally happen in earlier commits
git add -A && git commit -m "Update for release"
npm version minor # or major or patch
git push --follow-tags # better than --tags!
npm publish