Pixxulo — Advanced

#What you'll learn

• How Pixxulo measures colour (OKLCH, ΔE2000) and what that means for ramps, merges and harmony.
• Exactly what each export format contains, so tools and engines read it right.
• How palette ids, built-in palettes and copies work.
• How cloud sets merge across devices, and their limits.
• How to run Pixxulo as the palette hub for a multi-app pipeline.

#Before you start

• Read the Pixxulo — Intermediate guide: ramps, locks, Extract, Access and Cloud.
• For the format sections it helps to know where your tool or engine loads palettes from (a .gpl in GIMP/Aseprite, a JSON in your game, CSS for a website).

#How-tos

#How to make perceptually even ramps by hand

Pixxulo does its colour work in OKLCH: lightness, chroma (colourfulness) and hue, built so equal steps look equal.

1. Select a swatch and open Picker. Use the OKLCH — perceptual sliders.
2. For a ramp, change Lightness in equal steps and leave Hue and Chroma nearly still; nudge Hue a few degrees towards blue in the shadows and towards yellow in the highlights.
3. If a colour can't exist on screen at that lightness and chroma, Pixxulo reduces the chroma until it fits and keeps the hue and lightness. Very saturated darks therefore come out slightly less saturated than the slider suggests.
4. Compare with Ramp → Hue-shifted ramp, which does the same thing automatically.

#How to export for each tool exactly

1. Press Ctrl+S (or click Export) and choose a format. The window shows the file's text, the palette id and its Lospec link.
2. Pick by destination:

1. Copy works for the text formats; the binary ones (.ase, .act) and PNG strip download only.

#How to import from anywhere

1. Click Import.
2. Choose files… accepts several files at once: .gpl, .pal, .ase, .act, .hex, .json, .css, .txt or an image. A swatch strip keeps its exact colours; a picture is reduced to its 16 main colours (use Extract for more control).
3. Under From Lospec, paste a Lospec palette address (or just its name, such as sweetie-16) and click Fetch.
4. If Lospec refuses the request, download the .gpl from Lospec and import the file instead.
5. To grab a list of hex codes from a web page or code file, copy it and press Ctrl+V anywhere in Pixxulo.

#How to use palette ids in your own tools

1. Every palette has a stable id. Yours look like pl_…; the built-in ones are preset:<name>.
2. Copy it from the palette menu (Copy palette id) or read it in the Export window.
3. Built-in palettes never change: your first edit saves a copy under Your palettes that remembers which built-in palette it came from.
4. Keep the id in your own notes or files to know exactly which palette an asset used, even after renaming.

#How to merge near-duplicates with confidence

1. Merge similar joins colours whose ΔE2000 difference is under 2: the standard "just noticeable difference", so players can't tell them apart anyway.
2. Run it after Extract or after combining two palettes, then check the toast: it tells you how many colours were merged.
3. If it merged a pair you meant to keep different (for example two very close UI greys), undo with Ctrl+Z and move one of them apart in Picker before merging again.

#How to manage palettes across devices with Cloud

1. Cloud stores all your palettes as one set in your account.
2. Save my palettes updates the set; Save as a new cloud set starts a second set (for example one per game project).
3. Open / merge a cloud set… merges by palette id: palettes that exist on both sides keep the most recently changed version, new ones are added.
4. Deleting a palette on one device does not remove it from the set until that device saves the set again, so save after a clean-up.

#Workflows

#One palette, every app

1. Build and check the palette in Pixxulo.
2. Send to App sends it as a palette asset. Pixxivi, Pixxato, Pixxori, Pixxico, Pixxomo, Pixxura and the other palette-reading apps open it directly.
3. In Pixxori it becomes a recoloured copy of the tileset; in Pixxico a UI theme; in Pixxava each outfit colour snaps to its nearest palette colour.
4. When you change the palette, send it again: receiving apps always make a new copy, so nothing already made is overwritten.

#Collect palettes from your art

1. In any app, send an image, animation or sprite sheet to the Library.
2. In Pixxulo, open it from Library: Pixxulo turns its colours into a new palette.
3. Palettes other apps sent show up under Your library palettes; opening one always creates a new palette.

#Ship palettes with your game

1. Export JSON and load colors in your game for palette-swap shaders or UI themes.
2. Export PNG strip at size 1 if your shader reads a palette texture (one pixel per colour, left to right).
3. Keep the palette id in your build notes so the art team can find the exact palette later.

#Tips and shortcuts

• Colour-vision simulation uses well-known research matrices (Machado 2009, full severity); Mono shows brightness only. Treat it as a strong guide, not a medical test.
• Contrast uses the WCAG formula, the same one browsers and accessibility tools use.
• Undo history belongs to the open palette and lasts for the session; switching palettes starts a fresh history.
• Your palettes are kept in this browser between visits; use Cloud as a backup and to move them.
• On a phone, the bottom bar has Library, Add, Generate, Tools and Export.

#Troubleshooting

• If a saturated dark colour won't get as vivid as you want, it's outside what screens can show at that lightness. Raise Lightness a little, or accept the reduced chroma.
• If your tool can't read the .ase file, try GIMP .gpl; most art tools read it.
• If Photoshop drops colours from an .act, the palette has more than 256 colours. Split it into two palettes.
• If Lospec import fails, download the .gpl from Lospec and use Choose files….
• If Copy says "Binary formats download only", you're on .ase, .act or PNG strip; use Download.

#Related guides

• Pixxulo — beginner guide · Pixxulo — Intermediate
• Pixxori · Pixxico · Pixxava · Pixxomo
• Send to App · Cloud and Library