Files and formats

A palette belongs to one place at a time, and ⌘S writes it back there. The title row carries a dot after the name while there are unsaved changes, and closing a window with changes asks first.

Opening

Where a palette lands depends on how you open it, and the difference is worth knowing.

Drop the file onto a palette window and it loads into that window. If what is already there has unsaved changes, Suisai warns you before replacing it.

Drag it onto the Dock icon and it opens in a new window instead, leaving what you were working on untouched. That’s the way to have both open at once.

Also from the Finder, from the Palette Library, and from Load Palette on the Palette menu.

Formats read: .ase, .aco, .gpl and .clr.

Names survive the trip

If a palette file names its swatches, Suisai keeps those names, shows them, exports them, and writes them back on save. Open a .ase with brand/primary in it and that’s still what it’s called when it goes back to Illustrator.

Swatches that arrive without a name are given one from the colour list, and that name is used everywhere it’s needed, exports included. It isn’t written into the file on save. A looked-up name is a description of the colour rather than a decision you made, so freezing it into the file would leave the wrong name sitting there the first time you changed the colour.

Saving

Where ⌘S writes depends on where the palette came from.

A .ase you opened from your Desktop stays a .ase on your Desktop. Suisai doesn’t relocate your files or silently convert them. The one exception is .aco, which it can read but not write, and it tells you rather than failing quietly.

The first save asks for a folder

New palettes default to ~/Library/Colors because that’s the folder every application’s colour panel reads, so a palette saved there’s available across the Mac, not just in Suisai. It’s also the folder the Palette Library shows you.

Because Suisai is sandboxed, macOS asks you to grant that folder the first time anything is written to it. It asks once. Nothing else in the app needs a permission.

Save As…

⇧⌘S writes the palette anywhere you choose, as Adobe Swatch Exchange, GIMP Palette or Apple Colour List. The palette belongs to that new file from then on.

Install in Colour Picker…

This writes a .clr copy of any palette into ~/Library/Colors, under a name you give it, so every application’s colour panel can use it.

Nothing happens to the file you started from. It isn’t moved, renamed or changed. Installing makes a copy and leaves the original alone.

What does change is where this window saves. From that point it belongs to the colour list, so a later ⌘S updates the list rather than the file you opened. The two are separate files now, and further edits go to the copy. If you meant to go on working on the original, use Save As… instead, or reopen it from the Library.

Reveal Colour Lists in Finder on the Palette menu opens that folder.

Exporting

Export is one-way. It writes a copy in another format and never changes where the palette lives: after exporting, ⌘S still goes wherever it went before.

Names in code exports are made safe as identifiers, and numbered when they repeat.

Dragging

The whole palette drags out of the window’s footer as a file, in the last format you exported. Any single colour drags out as a colour onto other apps.