13. Palettes
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## 13. Palettes

### 13.1. Dialog

The Palettes dialog

A palette is a set of discrete colors, in no particular order. See the Palettes section for basic information on palettes and how they can be created and used.

The Palettes dialog is used to select a palette, by clicking on it in a list or grid view. A few dozen more or less randomly chosen palettes are supplied with GIMP, and you can easily add new palettes of your own. The Palettes dialog also give you access to several operations for creating new palettes or manipulating the ones that already exist.

| Note
The Palettes dialog is not the same thing as the Index Palette dialog, which is used to manipulate the colormaps of indexed images.

The Palettes dialog is a dockable dialog; see the section on Dialogs and Docking for help on manipulating it. It can be activated in several ways:

- From the Toolbox menu: File->Dialogs->Palettes.

- From an image menu: Dialogs->Palettes.

- From the Tab menu in any dockable dialog: Add Tab->Palettes.

#### Grid/List modes

The Palettes dialog (Grid View)

In the Tab menu, you can choose between View as Grid and View as List. In Grid mode, the palettes are laid out in a spectacular rectangular array, making it easy to see many at once and find the one you are looking for. In List mode (the default), the palettes are lined up in a list, with the names beside them.

#### Using the Palettes dialog

Clicking on a palette in the dialog makes it GIMP's active palette. This does not really have any significance, though. Double-clicking on a palette brings up the Palette Editor, which allows you to set GIMP's foreground or background colors by clicking on colors in the palette display.

Double-clicking on a palette name (in List View mode) lets you to edit the name. Note that you are only allowed to change the names of palettes that you have added yourself, not those that are supplied with GIMP. If you edit a name that you are not allowed to change, it will revert back to its previous value as soon as you hit return or move the pointer focus elsewhere.

Right-clicking in the palette display area brings up the Palettes Menu, described in the next section. At the bottom of the dialog are a set of buttons, whose function all duplicate those of entries in the Palettes Menu:

- Edit Palette. This button brings up the Palette Editor.

- New Palette. See New Palette.

- Duplicate Palette. See Duplicate Palette.

- Delete Palette. See Delete Palette.

- Refresh Palettes. See Refresh Palettes.

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