I have a sprawling numbering system for my color palettes.  I started in theater, so I have 250 or so palettes that reference the Lee or Rosco library number that go from 0.1 (all emitters at full white) to 4990 for one of my favorite Rosco purple gels.  Later in my career, I added a block of palettes for things like Red (full saturation), Red 75% sat, and so on through each saturation and color of the rainbow.  These all ended up in the first open area, which was from CP 5001 onward. I then added CCT color palettes when I started working in film.  While I have a numbering system that means I can tell you what pallet triggers any color I’ve ever mixed, this also means I have way too many three or four digit color palettes.  Since I try to eliminate keystrokes each day, I’m very happy to discover [Color Palette] [Next].

Imagine you have a light in full saturation (CP 5001 in my template) and it’s not bright enough, so it’s time to reduce the saturation and boost the output by going to the 75% palette.  Instead of typing Fixture # [Color Palette] 5002 [Enter], I just found out you can type [Color Palette] [Next] [Enter].  Or if you find later during programming that you can indeed go full saturation because you freed up another fixture to double it with, [Color Palette] [Last] works to go to the previous color palette.  It was obvious the moment I thought of it, but it sure wasn’t before.

I’ve only known this keystroke option for a day of programming and I already love it.  It makes it so easy to go faster and still retain a numbering sequence that makes sense to me.  Hopefully it helps you too.  What key combo was obvious the moment you thought of it, but you never suspected before?  Hit me in the comments.