Why do applications that present color palettes sometimes restrict the colors to shades of gray?

0

I've noticed that sometimes on OS X, Adobe Illustrator's color palette only shows shades of gray rather than a full range of colors. If this occurred in Photoshop, I'd immediately assume the document was somehow set to Grayscale; however, I don't see such a setting in AI. Even so, when it has occurred I assumed that I bumped some keyboard shortcut and changed the mode or even more likely that the application had a bug. However, I recently saw the exact same problem occur in another application, OmniGroup's Outliner. There is a panel/palette to change color of text or rows and the palette(s) appeared to be grayscale only.

Is this a bug in OS X, a bug that coincidentally exist in both applications, or is there a system-wide setting that I'm somehow toggling?

Michael Prescott

Posted 2011-09-08T15:07:58.030

Reputation: 3 351

I thought Illustrator had a custom color palette. – Vervious – 2011-09-08T23:15:52.250

@Nano8Blazex At least Photoshop has a preference for Color Picker: Adobe / Apple – Lri – 2011-09-13T03:45:11.000

@Lri Oh, ok. :) – Vervious – 2011-09-13T20:29:28.360

Answers

1

The second tab of the OS X color picker shows Gray Scale Slider by default:

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In an Adobe CS color picker you could've accidentally selected the radio box for saturation:

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I don't know if it was either of these, but I've often been confused by both myself.

Lri

Posted 2011-09-08T15:07:58.030

Reputation: 34 501

I see! Thank you! It's possible that I bumped ⌘1 – Michael Prescott – 2011-09-14T00:46:56.603

Asked: 2011-09-08T15:07:58.030

Viewed: 138 times

Active: 2011-10-08T04:05:06.907