Color Swatches

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GaugeMaster Pro 2 adds professional color workflows built around Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) palettes, together with printed aids to dial in exact colors on your final gauge material.

All these controls live in the Canvas Settings pane, with the color matching tools in their own Color Matching Tools section.

Loading a palette

Use the Load .ase File button to import an Adobe Swatch Exchange palette. All the palette’s colors, including its named color groups, become available in the app.

The palette is saved inside the .gmpro file, so it always travels with your design.

The swatch color picker

Every color control in the app now offers the loaded swatches next to the standard color picker, with a search bar and a choice of list or grid view.

When you assign a swatch to a layer, the swatch name is kept with the color, so you always know which palette color you used.

Editing a swatch color

If you hand-edit a color after assigning a swatch to it, the color turns back into a plain color and the swatch name is no longer associated with it.

Print Swatches Grid

The Print Swatches Grid button prints the loaded palette as a labeled grid of color boxes. This is very useful for checking how the palette colors reproduce on the target printer and material before committing to a final gauge print.

Clear Swatches

The Clear Swatches button removes the loaded palette from the file. Any colors already applied to layers keep their values.

Color matching tools

To help you match an exact color on your final gauge material, first pick a Color to Match, then use either of the following options:

• Print Color Grid prints a page of close variations around the chosen color.
• Print Color Plate prints a color wheel on a round plate of your chosen Plate Diameter and Plate Min Rings.

Both printouts are aids for dialing in exact colors on the final gauge material, for example with the help of a colorimeter.

Getting the plate at its true size

When saving a Print Color Plate as a PDF with your browser’s Save as PDF option, the resulting page matches the round plate itself, with no wasted margins.

When printing on a real printer the page will always be your printer’s paper size, so make sure the print scale stays at 100% for the plate to come out at the Plate Diameter you asked for.