Flash CS3: The Missing Manual

Creating Custom Colors

Out of the box, Flash offers 216 Web-safe colors. But if you can't find the precise shade you want among those 216 colors, you're free to mix and match your own custom colors using Flash's Color panel.

Here's how:

1. Select Window → Color.

   The Color panel shown in Figure 5-34 appears with the Color tab selected.

   

   Figure 5-34. Flash packs a lot of power into the tiny Color tab. But most of the time, you can safely ignore everything except the Stroke and Fill icons (one of which you need to choose before you begin working with the Color tab) and the Color and Brightness windows, which you use to select a custom color. Out of the box, Flash lets you specify red, green and blue values, as shown here; if you'd prefer instead to specify hue, saturation, and brightness, check out Figure 5-35.

2. On the Color tab, click either the Fill icon or the Stroke icon, depending on whether you plan to apply your custom color to a fill or a stroke.

   Essential Drawing Terms gives you the lowdown on the difference between the two).

3. Select a custom color. You can do this one of four ways:

   • You can drag around on the Color Picker until you see a color you like in the Preview window (Figure 5-34).

   • If you know them, you can type values for the red, green, and blue color components of the color you want. (See the box on Saving Color Swatches.)

   • You can type a hexadecimal value in the Hexadecimal Color ...