P: Add custom colors for colour coding layers and groups

[twinbrush]

Wouldn't it be great to be able to use more colours than the 7 defaults for colour coding layers and groups? They're a great way (along with proper naming) to organise complex documents, but having only seven default colours to choose from means they start to become duplicated which pretty much defeats the purpose.

Would be really useful to have the ability (much like with Indesign and Illustrator) to use a wider palette of colours to colour code layers and groups.

[davescm]

I've no problem with more colours for those who want them.

However, on your second idea how would you order by colour on colours picked from a colour picker? By hue value, or hue then saturation.......... ?

[Toti Magdalena]

Perhaps the correct thing would be to be able to choose what colors you want the layers palette to show you. Not so much that it orders them, but that you can choose that only the certain colors that you have decided to show will appear in the layer palette.
 In relation to the number of colors, I could settle for increasing it to three times what we currently have available.
In case you could order them, it would seem perfect to me to be able to do it from higher to lower saturation. Or in any other way. The important thing is to know that you can order the layers based on the colors that you have decided to color in the layers palette yourself.

[dcolon13]

Back to some heavy PS time after mostly abandoning it for Procreate 10 years ago and it seems like not a lot has changed as far as Adobe addressing basic issues. More colors for labels would be great, I can't comprehend how professional software would not include this yet.  

[Rapha83br]

Since 2017, they have been asking Adobe to implement more colors in layer tags. 6 years have passed, and nothing has been done, a simple change to have more colors, or the option to choose a color and name it.

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, for your info, in Photoshop 25.2, there are now 11 colors to chose from:

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Some of the questions that I raised before the new colour labels were added are now known:

Left: The new label colours in v2024

Centre: The PSD opened into v2021 and saved

Right: The file opened back into v2024 after being saved from v2021

Notes:

* The colours are lost in an older version, as it doesn't understand the new hard-coded label colour (only two of them they show as a dark shading, why not all four or none?)

* Curiously – "Seafoam" is retained in both colour and the link to the colour label name

* Strangely – "Indigo" has the same colour as "Seafoam". however, it is not linked to either "Indigo" or "Seafoam" – it's linked to "No Color", despite the colour visually matching to be "Seafoam"

Updated ExtendScript code to set the active layer label colour:

setLayerLabelCol("seafoam");

function setLayerLabelCol(labelCol) {

    /*
    No Color = "none"
    Red = "red"
    Orange = "orange"
    Yellow = "yellowColor"
    Green = "green"
    Blue = "blue"
    Violet = "violet"
    Gray = "gray"
    // New in 2024:
    Magenta = "magenta"
    Seafoam = "seafoam"
    Indigo = "indigo"
    Fuchsia = "fuchsia"
    */

    var c2t = function (s) {
        return app.charIDToTypeID(s);
    };
    var s2t = function (s) {
        return app.stringIDToTypeID(s);
    };
    var descriptor = new ActionDescriptor();
    var descriptor2 = new ActionDescriptor();
    var reference = new ActionReference();
    reference.putEnumerated(s2t("layer"), s2t("ordinal"), s2t("targetEnum"));
    descriptor.putReference(c2t("null"), reference);
    descriptor2.putEnumerated(s2t("color"), s2t("color"), s2t(labelCol)); // variable labelCol
    descriptor.putObject(s2t("to"), s2t("layer"), descriptor2);
    executeAction(s2t("set"), descriptor, DialogModes.NO);
}

[Mark24805792bnui]

Same issue for me, I shoot products and jewelry, and often there are let's say 10 versions of the product, all having different colors (or colors digitally changed using PS) and I want to track all the colors with a color (Green label assigned to green emerald stone, blue for Sapphire, etc)...  if I have a red product, a pink product, a light blue and a dark blue stone or product to track, with tons of layers and folders it gets super confusing with labels being re-used (or using red for red and grey to represent pink, and no label for a different color, etc). Adobe please expand the colors!!!

[Atarix.nl]

I actually really like the black/dark gray layer label a lot. Its like an extra colour you cant access trough the menu's.

If you run this script (as an unknown) it makes it that dark gray label.

setLayerLabelCol("unknown");

function setLayerLabelCol(labelCol) {

/*

No Color = "none"

Red = "red"

Orange = "orange"

Yellow = "yellowColor"

Green = "green"

Blue = "blue"

Violet = "violet"

Gray = "gray"

// New in 2024:

Magenta = "magenta"

Seafoam = "seafoam"

Indigo = "indigo"

Fuchsia = "fuchsia"

*/

var c2t = function (s) {

return app.charIDToTypeID(s);

};

var s2t = function (s) {

return app.stringIDToTypeID(s);

};

var descriptor = new ActionDescriptor();

var descriptor2 = new ActionDescriptor();

var reference = new ActionReference();

reference.putEnumerated(s2t("layer"), s2t("ordinal"), s2t("targetEnum"));

descriptor.putReference(c2t("null"), reference);

descriptor2.putEnumerated(s2t("color"), s2t("color"), s2t(labelCol)); // variable labelCol

descriptor.putObject(s2t("to"), s2t("layer"), descriptor2);

executeAction(s2t("set"), descriptor, DialogModes.NO);

}

[Anthony34385280ijbe]

Really would be nice if we could add our own custom colors with a picker. Is it so hard to implement? For example, there's no "pink" color, which would be helpful, but just let us deifne custom colors to fit our own needs, Adobe, please? 🙂

[Mark24805792bnui]

I'm now using PS 25.9.0 and they have the added color options for the layers.