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Creating .ACB (Color Book) file from .ACO (swatches) file

Community Beginner ,
Apr 21, 2008 Apr 21, 2008

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Is there a way to convert a .aco file to a .acb file? I really need my colors to be visible in the Color Libraries section of Photoshop to use with Color Layers.

The .acb files are the files located in \Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Color Books.

Please let me know if anyone knows how to do that, it would be really helpful!
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Actions and scripting

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New Here ,
May 08, 2008 May 08, 2008

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Ates Goral (ates@magnetiq.com) has made a couple of color books
from custom color files that I have given him. He charges a reasonable price.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 09, 2008 Jul 09, 2008

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I finally found out how to do it myself. So if anyone needs to have one made, you can contact me instead of contacting Ates Goral ;)

julien.grimard@gmail.com

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Explorer ,
Jul 09, 2008 Jul 09, 2008

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Julien_Grimard@adobeforums.com wrote:
> I finally found out how to do it myself. So if anyone needs to have one made, you can contact me instead of contacting Ates Goral ;)
>
> julien.grimard@gmail.com

I also have a couple of library scripts in xtools that may help. One can read
ColorBook files, the other can read and write ColorSwatches files. Fitting the
two together shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

-X
--
for photoshop scripting solutions of all sorts
contact: xbytor@gmail.com

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New Here ,
Mar 17, 2011 Mar 17, 2011

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Hi Julien,

Can you give me some Idea about creating the color books from scratch.

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Advisor ,
Mar 17, 2011 Mar 17, 2011

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I have this code that reads Color Book files:

http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ps-scripts/xtools/xlib/ColorBook.js

You will also need this file to do the binary I/O.

http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ps-scripts/xtools/xlib/Stream.js

There are several 'magic' fields in ColorBook (like Vendor ID and Vendor Name) that

you will have to figure out how to create new values that PS likes. Using

swatch files is much easier and code is on the sourceforge site for reading

and writing those.

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Mar 17, 2011 Mar 17, 2011

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For the most part, you should not be creating color book files.   Those are for folks like Pantone, Toyo, DIC, etc. who publish real swatch books.

Most users should only be creating .ACO or .ASE files for their color swatches.

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Guide ,
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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And creating ASE files/books is very easy too… if you have/script ID… just add colors to a temp doc swatches and app save swatches…

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Community Expert ,
Jan 24, 2012 Jan 24, 2012

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You mean the question the original poster had found the answer to himself in 2008?

Have you noticed that the conversation had shifted somewhat since then?

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Guest
Nov 05, 2013 Nov 05, 2013

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Just in case someone still needs to create custom color books from scratch, I wrote two scripts which might be useful, for Photoshop CS3 or later:

Two generated custom color books, based on the W3C and X11 sets of color names, are also available from the new Goodies section of my site.

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New Here ,
Dec 30, 2013 Dec 30, 2013

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I tried to generate the acb file, but still ran into a problem. The RIP software does not recognize the color as a custom spot color. Isn't there any software that can take care of generating an acb file with some options?

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Community Expert ,
Dec 30, 2013 Dec 30, 2013

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What are you talking about specifically?

Have you created a Spot Channel in the image/s?

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Explorer ,
Dec 15, 2016 Dec 15, 2016

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Did not work for CC, any updates for the script in the near future? Thanks for putting together

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Guest
Dec 16, 2016 Dec 16, 2016

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Hopefully, I'll be able to provide some adequate answer after getting more information:

ASK- Forum Success Guide: Efficiently using the forums

Ask: Include relevant information

Make sure that you include enough information about your issue so that folks can provide the answer you need. See below for tips that can help you get a useful response.

Tips for effective posting

Include details, such as:

  • Adobe software title and version (e.g., Premiere Pro CC 2014 v. 8.2)
  • Operating system (e.g., Windows 8.1 or Mac OS 10.8.6)
  • Relevant hardware (e.g., 4GB RAM or video card/driver version)
  • Third-party software in use
  • What you did, what steps you took, what happened at what moment, and what you did to try to resolve it
  • Any screenshots that provide important information to the user who is helping you

--Mikaeru

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Advisor ,
Dec 18, 2016 Dec 18, 2016

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Thanks, Mikaeru, for keeping up the good fight that I could no longer wage.

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Advocate ,
Jun 03, 2020 Jun 03, 2020

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Many thanks!!!

Just tried and made some CMYK colors, created a book and works flawlessly!
Many thanks for all the work creating the scripts and doing all research.

I used a simple code editor for adjusting the JSON. Then used Photoshop CC 2018, I cant upgrade due to old system

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Explorer ,
Jul 08, 2024 Jul 08, 2024

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i was able to do this for >3000 colors relatively easily. you can source the color book info from many places. if you were doing pantone or something like that you could query all potential combinations of this URL https://www.pantone.com/media/wysiwyg/color-finder/img/pantone-color-chip-101-c.webp and filter responses to only show images that respond with X-Cache: HIT, HIT (not X-Cache: MISS, MISS), writing the successful links to a .csv file, wget the image links in csv to a directory, then run imagemagick against that directory to create a 3-5 depth histogram of the webp images, sort histogram by most occuring and use regex to get the individual RGB values for the most occuring color which you could then use to build your own color book later on, or just store the hex value, or whatever value you want. example of unfiltered imagemagick histogram response: 

 

          6442: (25,25,25) #191919 srgb(25,25,25)
          1832: (184,183,164) #B8B7A4 srgb(184,183,164)
         88526: (254,254,254) #FEFEFE srgb(254,254,254)
        193600: (255,215,1) #FFD701 srgb(255,215,1)

 


Building a color book: 
Download and unzip this. 
https://github.com/atesgoral/acb

In the main directory, create a json file with your specs, save it as data.json with RGB, CMYK or Lab values as numbers (below example is in RGB so RGB values are used, separated by comma separated lines in the "components" section): 

 

{
   "id":3057,
   "title":"TitleOfYourBook",
   "colorNamePrefix":"",
   "colorNamePostfix":"",
   "description":"Description not visible or used anywhere practical",
   "pageSize":7,
   "pageKey":4,
   "colorModel":"RGB",
   "colors":[
      {
         "name":"Spot Color Name 1",
         "code":"000001",
		 "spotProcessIdentifier":"spflspot",
         "components":[
            50,
            46,
            32
         ]
      },
      {
         "name":"Spot Color Name 2",
         "code":"000002",
         "components":[
            33,
            39,
            32
         ]
      }
   ]
}

 

 
edit encode-acb.js to: 

 

const fs = require('fs');
const { encodeAcb } = require('@atesgoral/acb');

// Specify the path to your JSON file containing the ACB data
const jsonFilePath = 'data.json'; // Update with your file path

// Read the JSON file
fs.readFile(jsonFilePath, 'utf8', (err, data) => {
    if (err) {
        console.error('Error reading JSON file:', err);
        return;
    }

    try {
        const acbData = JSON.parse(data);

        // Encode ACB data
        const acbBuffer = Buffer.concat([...encodeAcb(acbData)]);

        // Write the ACB buffer to a file
        fs.writeFileSync('TitleOfYourBook.acb', acbBuffer);

        console.log('ACB file generated successfully: mybook.acb');
    } catch (error) {
        console.error('Error parsing JSON or encoding to ACB:', error);
    }
});

 

 make sure node.js is installed. start a powershell or command in that directory and type node encode-acb.js. your colorbook should now be in the directory. 

To change all colors to spot colors, open your .acb file in a binary hex editor https://hexed.it/ and edit the last 8 bits (scroll all the way down and replace letters on right side) from spflproc to spflspot. you now have a spot color library. 

EDIT: you have to use Lab colors from the gitgo to make an accurate spot color library. you cant just write spflspot at the end of the acb hex file. 

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Advocate ,
Jul 09, 2024 Jul 09, 2024

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I doubt your numbers for CMYK are as the official ones. The real CMYK values differ from a color chip and then simply made CMYK. Appreciatie the work though 

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Explorer ,
Jul 09, 2024 Jul 09, 2024

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LATEST

(Edit 2 for readers: Lab colors are used in acb files as Lab is a good intermediary between RGB/CMYK. Starting with Lab is the safest option, the next safest option when converting RGB to CMYK or vice versa is first converting to Lab and then converting to the desired color. if converting to cielab via spreadsheet you would have about 25 columns: RGB, normalized RGB, green val, magenta val, blue val, yellow val, gamma corrected RGB, XYZ defined, normalized XYZ, trans XYZ, final result of Lab values)

Thanks for reading. Correct, the CMYK and RGB will slightly vary but will suffice for digital preview since RGB is being pulled. Official pantone acb files use Lab values and no other values are stored- RGB and CMYK is left up to your graphics program to interpret which 99.9% of the time has a doc color mode of RGB or CMYK, so the Lab values aren't even being utilized 99% of the time.

That being said, if printing with color conversion on a printer that already has the pantone library, the CMYK/RGB/Lab values are all trashed at time of printing and that printers' own color library management is used to define ink output based solely on the spot color ID, all other info is ignored. You could have a spot color like "PANTONE Yellow 021 C" physically colored CMYK 0 0 0 0 (white) in the document and if the printer uses color conversion it would set it's own CMYK output based on it's calibration like 0 1 98 1. Printing without color conversion leaves CMYK up to chance as CMYK 10 20 10 5 will look vastly different from printer to printer. Most printers nowadays also use RGB instead of CMYK, if color conversion is not set, as RGB has a wider spectrum of colors, that's why I chose to pull RGB. Also some printers run dual CMYK and some even run a lighter version like Cyan-lightcyan-magenta-lightmagenta-yellow-lightyellow. 

To get accurate cmyk or Lab values, the most recent data is likely hosted on a 3rd party site and would require an additional step after code validation and before building the color book, like querying this URL https://icolorpalette.com/color/pantone-VALUE-c and scraping lab values from selector #content > div > div.col-sm-12.py-4.col-md-6 > div:nth-child(5), and route output to your CSV prior to creating the .json file from CSV. not sure if those values are accurate but that's how you'd do it. 

EDIT: you have to use Lab colors from the gitgo to make an accurate spot color library. you cant just write spflspot at the end of the acb hex file. 

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