# &app; Manual

## Introduction

&app; is an application for the GNOME desktop that allows you to select an initial color and generate a variety of different colorschemes from that color. The primary audience of this application is graphic designers (and particularly web designers) though it can be used for anything where you might need to pick several colors that go well together, such as painting rooms in your house.

## Getting Started

This section explains how to start &app; and gives a basic overview of the application.

### Starting &app;

You can start &app; in the following ways:

Applications menu

- Choose Graphics &app; .

Command line

- Type `agave`, then press Return.

### The &app; window

When you start &app;, you will see a window that looks very much like the following:

#### &app; Window

Shows &app; main window.

The &app; window contains the following elements:

Menubar

- The menus on the menubar contain all of the commands you need to use &app;.

Toolbar

- The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you can access from the menubar.

Scheme Display Box

- The scheme display box contains several large color swatches which display a color scheme based on the current settings. It also contains controls that allow you to select a new base color and scheme type.

Palette

- The palette offers a selection of color presets that you can click in order to change the current base color. You can choose from several built-in palettes and you can also create and add your own palettes. See sect-palettes for more information.

Favorites

- The favorites list displays a list of colors that you have saved, as well as a small toolbar that allows you to modify the list.

Status bar

- The status bar is pretty much useless. I should just get rid of it.

## Using &app;

### Choosing a Base Color

There are several different ways of choosing a color that will be used as the base of your colorschemes.

#### The Color Selector Button

The most basic way to choose a color is by using the Color selector button. Clicking on this button will bring up the dialog shown below:

##### Color Selection Dialog

Color Selection Dialog

The color selection dialog allows you to choose a base color in a variety of ways, including:

- Specifying Hue, Saturation, and Value

- Specifying Red, Green, and Blue components

- Choosing from a color wheel

- Choosing a color from any point on the screen (eyedropper tool)

Using the color selector button is probably the best method to use if you already know which color you want to use as your base color.

#### Palettes

Another way to select a base color is by using one of the color palettes in the bottom part of the application window. These palettes provide a number of preset colors that you can use as a starting point. You can select one of the colors in the palette as your base color by simply clicking on it.

You can add your own custom palettes to &app; so that they will show up in the palettes selector. To do so, you must first create a palette file. A palette file is a file in the gimp palette format. An trivial example file follows:

    GIMP Palette
    Name: MyPalette
    #
      0   0   0 Black
    255   0   0 Red
      0 255   0 Green
      0   0 255 Blue
    255 255 255 White

All palette files must start with the `GIMP Palette` header and a palette name. You can optionally include a comment starting with a `#`. The remaining lines define individual colors' red, green, and blue components ranging from 0 to 255.

Your palette file should be saved with a `.gpl` extension and saved in home home directory at `.local/share/agave/palettes/`. If your file is well-formed, &app; will load your custom palette next time you restart the application.

#### Favorites

If you've previously saved colors to your favorites list, you can use any of those colors as the basis of your colorscheme by selecting it from the list.

#### Random

If you're really stuck and need some inspiration, you can also have &app; generate a random base color for you. You can do this by clicking the Random button on the toolbar. Alternately, you can select Ctrl R Edit Random from the menu.

### Choosing a Scheme Type

&app; allows you choose from several different types of color schemes. These color schemes are explained below. In addition, a diagram is provided for each scheme which shows the relationships between the generated colors on a color wheel.

Complements

- Generates a 2-color scheme consisting of the base color and a color directly across the color wheel from the base color

  #### Complements

  Shows complementary color scheme

Split-Complements

- Generates a 3-color scheme consisting of the base color and two colors that are slightly offset from its complement

  #### Split Complements

  Shows split-complementary color scheme

Triads

- Generates a 3-color scheme consisting of the base color and two other colors that are equally spaced around the color wheel

  #### Triads

  Shows triads color scheme

Tetrads

- Generates a 4-color scheme consisting of the base color and three other colors that are equally spaced around the color wheel

  #### Tetrads

  Shows tetrads color scheme

Analogous

- Generates a 3-color scheme consisting of the base color and two other colors that are slightly offset

  #### Analogous

  Shows analogous color scheme

Monochromatic

- Generates a 3-color scheme consisting of the base color and two other colors that are the same hue, but vary in saturation or value

## About &app;

&app; was written by Jonathon Jongsma. To find more information about &app;, please visit the &app; project website.

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, see the Feedback section of the GNOME User Guide.

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public license as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found at this link, or in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program.