MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR, Use Manual, Page: 147 / 500

Controlling color 147
Changing the color depth of a movie
When you save a Director movie, it is set to the same color depth as the system on which you are
authoring. You can use Lingo or JavaScript syntax to reset the system color depth to match the
color depth of a movie. For more information, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director
Help Panel.
If you want to set the color depth of a movie without using script, you can use system utilities to
change the color depth of your system before you save the movie file. On the Macintosh, you can
also make the movie reset the system color depth by selecting Edit > Preferences > General and
selecting Reset Monitor to Movie’s Color Depth. (If you are using a Macintosh OS X operating
system, select the Director menu, instead of the Edit menu, to access Preferences.)
Choosing colors for movie elements
Use the Color menu to select colors for movie elements such as the Stage, vector shapes, and the
foreground and background of sprites. For some elements, such as Stage and sprite colors, you can
also enter hexadecimal values for any RGB color. The Color menu displays the colors in the
current palette; the 16 larger color boxes at the top of the menu identify your favorite colors.
If the movie is set to specify colors as RGB values, selecting a color from the Color menu specifies
the RGB value of the color, not its index value. (For an explanation of the difference between
index and RGB color, see
“Specifying palette index and RGB color” on page 146 .) The bar at the
top of the Color menu indicates whether the movie is set to RGB or index color.
If you want to select a color that is not in the current palette (and therefore not available on the
Color menu), you can use the system color picker to specify any color. You can also change the set
of colors available on the Color menu by displaying a different color palette.