PALETTE

A table of available simultaneous colors that paints pixels on the screen.

(1) In computer graphics, a palette is the set of available colors. For a given application, the palette may be only a subset of all the colors that can be physically displayed. For example, a SVGA system can display 16 million unique colors, but a given program would use only 256 of them at a time if the display is in 256-color mode. The computer system’s palette, therefore, would consist of the 16 million colors, but the program’s palette would contain only the 256-color subset.A palette is also called a CLUT (color look-up table).On monochrome systems, the term palette is sometimes used to refer to the available fill patterns. (2) In paint and illustration programs, a palette is a collection of symbols that represent drawing tools. For example, a simple palette might contain a paintbrush, a pencil, and an eraser.

The set of colors used in a picture or on a computer screen.Older computers typically used only 16 colors.Modern ones use at least 256 colors,which can be coded by 8 bits of information.With advanced color cards and monitors 65.5 thousand colors ( 16-bit ) or 16 million colors ( 24-bit ) are used.Different web browsers and computer platforms do not necessarily use identical palettes.