View this page for help with program installation.
View this page for help with program activation.

1. Overview: what am I adding to Photoshop?
2. Using the color spaces
3. Creating palettes

What are you adding to Photoshop with HVC Color Composer? This product is an enhanced version of Photoshop's color picker. You can switch between this enhanced color picker and Photoshop's basic color picker any time you want through Photoshop's preferences. (see program installation notes to find out how to do this)

The HVC Color Composer has all of the features as the Photoshop color picker, in the same basic layout, so it will be completely familiar to any Photoshop user while still offering the advantages. You open the color picker the same way you always do in Photoshop. Just click the foreground color swatch, either one of them, shown here:

Now on to what's new. The biggest addition to the picker is the Master Colors Perceptual HVC Space. This is a new color space, resting along side the other spaces accessible through Photoshop. You'll notice off to the right, the H, V, and C radio buttons are placed, similar to the other 3-axis spaces. Just click one of the radio buttons to begin using the HVC space to select colors.

HVC (Hue, Value, and Chroma) is a far more intuitive, perceptually-oriented space than the others available in Photoshop. Spaces like RGB are just not suited for creative use. The human mind is not accustomed to considering color in quantities of red, green and blue light. There are many visual distortions in RGB as well. HSB (just a reorganization or RGB) is a bit better for navigating through colors, but suffers from the same visual distortions. CMYK, Lab, both have their uses, but accommodating the creative process is not one of them. HVC provides fully distortion-free clarity to color selection, and this clarity is now available inside your copy of Photoshop.

You'll notice by clicking the "H" (Hue) radio button, we view the HVC space by hue slices, and navigate the hue axis with the vertical slider. The logic is exactly the same in the basic Photoshop color picker.

By clicking the "V" (Value) radio, we view HVC by value slices. Value is a color lightness property. With this, we view all colors of a certain lightness at once.

And the "C" (Chroma) radio button is selected. We view all colors of a certain intensity at once.

Creating Palettes

Aside from navigating through the HVC space and using it to pick colors, there is another important feature of HVC Color Composer. It gives you the ability to generate dynamic palettes based on color contrast relationships. It's simple:

1. You pick a color.
2. Click "Create Palette" to make a palette that "works" with that color.

The resulting palette contains an array of colors that have certain relationships from your color.

The palettes that are generated are very unique, vibrant, interesting arrays of color that you would not be able to find using any other methods, not even by flipping through professional design swatch or palette books. Yet, the palettes have actual significance to your own work. You chose the starting colors, and now you know the exact relationship between your colors of importance and all the palette colors. There is rhyme and reason to the palette's existence. It fits into a game plan, a greater vision of color selection for your personal work. That's something a static, prefab palette could never accomplish.

View the next topic: 2. Using the Color Spaces

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