Inkscape: Create Color Palette

Inkscape comes preset with several color palettes you can use, but you can always create new color palettes. Color palettes are saved as a GIMP Palette (*.gpl) since Inkscape uses that format as well. We will look at creating a color palette visually through Inkscape and then making modifications to the text styled file afterwards. However, once you see how the file is formatted, you can skip the visual setup and manually create additional palettes if desired. Just be sure each palette is given a unique name and that they are saved under the Inkscape Palette folder to make this usable for Inkscape.

Custom Inkscape Palette with color name on hover

Create the palette visually in Inkscape

While the palette file will end up in text styled format, creating what will ultimately become the palette visually might be easier for people. So I start with 16 x 16 pixel squares and assign each square a color that will be used in the palette. As an example, the clipart graphics made for here are created using a 20 color palette: 10 dark colors including black and 10 light colors including white. Image below shows 64 x 64 squares just to make it easier to see on screen.

Visual 10 column, 2 row blocks representing colors to be included in custom palette

Note: The exported palette file will order the palette colors using the Red, Green, Blue value for each color. IF you wish the palette result be in a specific order, we will need to reorder the list manually. We will touch on that later.

Save the Palette Visually

Before we save the color palette as a GIMP palette, let's save is visually as a Inkscape SVG. From the File menu, select Save As. Making sure the format come up as the default Inkscape SVG) in the drop down format selector, ensure you are saving in the desired location and the file is named as you wish.

Save palette in GIMP palette format

To save the palette as a GIMP palette, we again use the Save As option in the File menu. This time we change the format to GIMP Palette (*.gpl) and save the file but this time under the Inkscape > Palettes folder. Under Ubuntu Linux this is /home/USER/.config/inkscape/palettes. After saving, you will need to restart Inkscape in order for it to make the palette available to be used.

Here is what the example 20 color palette would look like.

GIMP Palette
Name: 20-colors.gpl
#
  0   0   0 #000000
 32  74 135 #204A87
 46  52  54 #2E3436
 78 154   6 #4E9A06
 92  53 102 #5C3566
114 159 207 #729FCF
138 226  52 #8AE234
143  89   2 #8F5902
164   0   0 #A40000
173 127 168 #AD7FA8
186 189 182 #BABDB6
196 160   0 #C4A000
206  92   0 #CE5C00
226  74 154 #E24A9A
233 185 110 #E9B96E
239  41  41 #EF2929
246 126 163 #F67EA3
252 175  62 #FCAF3E
252 233  79 #FCE94F
255 255 255 #FFFFFF

The file is formatted using the red, green, and blue value in descending order, with the Hexadecimal for the color being used the name The color name or hexadecimal value here, is what is shown in Inkscape when you hover over the color in the palette area.

Drawbacks to the visual method

One big drawback to the visual method of creating palettes is that the colors are ordered by the red, green, and blue values in descending order, which may not be the desired order for the colors to appear in your palette. For the example, the ideal display order is the 10 dark colors followed by the 10 light colors. We do not get that result here. Another drawback is the use of the hexadecimal value being used as the name. I personally like to use a name that describes the color. For the example, using light gray for the lighter shade of gray and dark gray for the darer shade. We will need to manually reorder the list and replace the hexadecimal designation with a name for the colors. So the resulting reordered and renamed gpl file content will be

GIMP Palette
Name: 20-colors.gpl
#
196 160   0 Dark Yellow
 78 154   6 Dark Green
206  92   0 Dark Orange
 32  74 135 Dark Blue
 92  53 102 Dark Purple
 143  89   2 Dark Brown
 164   0   0 Dark Red
 46  52  54 Dark Gray
226  74 154 Dark Pink
  0   0   0 Black
252 233  79 Light Yellow
138 226  52 Light Green
252 175  62 Light Orange
114 159 207 Light Blue
173 127 168 Light Purple
233 185 110 Light Brown
239  41  41 Light Red
186 189 182 Light Gray
246 126 163 Light Pink
255 255 255 White