Page 187 - Xara Web Designer Premium

Color Handling 187

already present in the design and you load or paste templates from the ONLINE
CONTENT CATALOG containing Theme colors with the same name, you will be asked if
you want to match the actual color of the imported Theme colors to the existing ones.
The Theme colors in most templates are consistently named so when you import
elements from different themes colors are matched perfectly.
Important: If you just select an object on the page that has a named color applied to it,
and alter it with the Color Editor, this will always turn it into a local color instead of a
named color (because it is assumed that if you try to edit the color of the object that's
what you mean to do. If you really want to change the named color so this and all
occurrences of the color change, then you should do so by editing the named color (on
page 190)).

Theme color schemes

Many of the web themes offered in the ONLINE CONTENT CATALOG include alternative
color schemes which can easily be applied to websites which use the same theme, to
transform the color scheme instantly. The color schemes are normally found in the
ONLINE CONTENT CATALOG in each theme under WEBSITE THEMES, after all the page
layouts and separate graphic elements that make up the theme. They all have "Color
scheme" in their titles in the ONLINE CONTENT CATALOG, so they are easily identified.

To apply a color scheme to your website, simply drag the scheme from the ONLINE
CONTENT CATALOG and drop it on your page. You can try applying the color schemes of
one theme to a website created from the templates of another theme. But you will get
mixed results doing this and some schemes will not work acceptably with some themes.
So for best results stick to the color schemes of the theme that you used to create the
site.
One of the color schemes provided with each theme matches the default colors used by
that theme. This allows you to easily return to the original colors if you prefer, after
experimenting with the alternate schemes.

Creating your own color schemes

It’s very easy to create your own color scheme files, which you can pass on to other Web
Designer Premium users for them to apply to designs created with the same theme.

1. Load one of the page templates for the theme. Choose one which shows off all the
colors of the theme most effectively. You can add more elements to the page if
required, to help show off the range of theme colors.
2. Edit the named colors of the theme one at a time, as described in the ‘Editing
named colors’ section (on page 190) below.
3. Once you are happy with your new color scheme, use "FILE" > "SAVE AS" to save it.
The filename you choose MUST include "themecolorscheme" as part of the
filename. That is how Web Designer Premium identifies color scheme files – just by
looking for that sequence in the filename. It’s a good idea to also include the name