DreamLight® PixelPalettes™ is a color tool kit to facilitate creating graphics for multimedia developers and web designers. At DreamLight, we often wrestled with the color tables in graphics programs while creating graphics for multimedia and the web. Most software simply present color tables in the numerical order that the colors are stored in the computer, making them nothing more than a jumble of colors. We created DreamLight PixelPalettes to present common color tables in a manner that is much more representative of the actual color space being defined. This makes working with the color palettes much more intuitive. We’ve used DreamLight PixelPalettes in a wide variety of projects from designing Macromedia’s FreeHand, Director & Extreme 3D icons to the KeyQuest CD-ROM.

DreamLight® AlphaBits™ is a set of specially designed characters for use in multimedia and the web. We were often frustrated trying to use very small type on multimedia screens or web images for copyright lines and other fine print. We custom designed DreamLight AlphaBits as the smallest typeface we could design while still maintaining high legibility. The characters are hand antialiased bitmaps with an x height of only five pixels. We’ve used DreamLight AlphaBits on images throughout our on-line gallery archives.

DreamLight PixelPalettes and DreamLight AlphaBits have been so useful to our own studio, I know they will be very helpful to other multimedia developers and web designers as well.

NOTE: Please include a valid email address so that we may email you the registration information.

Enjoy,

Michael Scaramozzino
President and Creative Director

Contents

PixelPalette Basics

Most software present color tables by simply displaying each color in the order that they are stored in the computer’s internal color lookup table. This type of presentation is not very useful to the graphic designer who is more interested in the color itself, rather than the position of the color in the computer’s internal color lookup table.

Below is a typical color table organized exactly as the computer sees it internally.

Here is the exact same color table as seen in the corresponding DreamLight PixelPalette.

As you can see, the intended color space is much more clearly represented. By duplicating some of the colors in the PixelPalette image (the internal color table is still the same 256 color table), we can more clearly show the 6x6x6 color cube as well as the red, green, blue and gray color ramps that make up the entire color space represented in this particular PixelPalette.

Each 6x6 2D square is a separate plane within the 6x6x6 3D color cube. A straight line drawn through this imaginary color cube would intersect each plane at a color within a straight line blend between the two end colors.

To use a DreamLight PixelPalette, simply open one in the graphics software of your choice, such as Macromedia FreeHand, Director, or Adobe Photoshop, and select colors using the eye dropper tool. When designing graphics for multimedia or the web, you may wish to disable color correction that your software may use, since the graphics are not intended for print reproduction.

PixelPalette Color Lookup Tables

Also included with the DreamLight PixelPalette package is a set of color lookup tables for direct use with Macromedia FreeHand and Adobe Photoshop. This is in addition to the standard PixelPalette images which can be used in FreeHand, Director, Photoshop or any other image editing software.

DreamLight AlphaBits

DreamLight® AlphaBits™ are hand antialiased characters with an x height of only five pixels for use in any image editing or multimedia software such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Director. Since they are custom designed and hand antialiased at the smallest size possible, they are smoother and more legible than any other PostScript or TrueType font at a similar size. They are especially useful for small copyright lines on images intended for use in multimedia or on the web.

Using DreamLight AlphaBits is easy:

1. Import the desired AlphaBits image into your favorite image editing software.
2. Use the marquee tool to select a letter including the blue border.
3. Set your ink mode to darkest or lightest for Black on White or White on Black respectively.
4. Drag the letter outside the AlphaBits panel while holding the option key to copy it.
5. Select the next letter in the same manner.
6. Option-Drag it next to the first letter, overlapping the blue border pixel.
7. Once you finish your full “type slug” select the blue border
8. Fill the blue border with the background color.
9. You may then use the “type slug” as-is or as a mask to burn into your image.

History

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