Free Palette Format Converter
Move a palette between painting and design apps: open ASE, ACO, GIMP GPL, Procreate, Clip Studio, ACT, PAL, Paint.NET, CSS, JSON, SVG or a PNG swatch card, and save it as any of twelve formats, or all of them in one ZIP. The file is read and written in your browser and never uploaded. Free, with no sign-up.
Drop a palette file here, or choose one
ASE, ACO, GPL, Procreate, Clip Studio, ACT, JASC PAL, Paint.NET, CSS, JSON, SVG or a PNG swatch card. It stays on your device.
Reads 13 formats.ASE, ACO, GPL, Procreate, Clip Studio .cls, ACT, JASC and RIFF PAL, Paint.NET, CSS, JSON, SVG and PNG.
Writes 12, or all at once.Download one format, or a ZIP with the palette in every format this tool writes.
Honest about limits.Warns before Procreate's 30, Paint.NET's 96 or ACT's 256 colours cut a palette short.
Stays on your device.Files are parsed and written in the browser; nothing is uploaded.
- Free
- No sign-up
- Runs entirely in your browser
What is a palette file converter?
A palette file converter rewrites a set of colours from one app's swatch file into another's, for example from Photoshop's ASE into a Procreate .swatches or a Clip Studio colour set. This one reads 13 formats, writes 12, keeps colour names where the target stores them and runs entirely in your browser.
How to use the Palette Format Converter
The tool takes 5 steps, all on your device.
Drop a palette file on the box, press Choose file, or try the GPL, JSON or CSS sample.
Check the colours: each swatch shows its hex code and name, with buttons to copy the code or remove the colour.
Rename the palette if you like; the name goes into the formats that store one and names the downloads.
Pick an Output format. The note under it says where that format is used and warns when it cannot hold every colour or name.
Press Export to download that format, or All formats (.zip) for all twelve at once.
What the Palette Format Converter does
The Palette Format Converter reads and writes Clip Studio, Adobe and Procreate palettes, checks each in both directions, and trims before export.
Clip Studio colour sets
Reads and writes Clip Studio Paint's binary .cls colour set, following the layout reverse-engineered in the open-source CLSEncoderDecoder project. Its three sample files, including one with a Unicode name, are decoded and re-encoded byte for byte in this tool's tests.
Adobe files as Adobe writes them
ASE files are written as one named group of RGB colours; ACO files carry the version 1 section followed by version 2 with names, the layout Photoshop saves. Reading, ASE accepts RGB, CMYK, Lab and Gray swatches and ACO accepts RGB, HSB, CMYK, Lab and greyscale.
Procreate that opens
A .swatches file is a ZIP holding Swatches.json: one object with the palette name and up to 30 swatches in hue, saturation and brightness from 0 to 1. Empty slots and the older array-wrapped layout are read too.
Checked in both directions
For every format, the tests write a palette and read it back: the colour count and every RGB value must come out unchanged, and the name-keeping formats must return each colour's name. Among our color tools for artists, this is the one that gets a palette into the app you paint in.
PNG cards that round-trip
The PNG swatch card carries the exact palette, names included, in a text chunk image viewers ignore, so the converter reads its own cards back without guessing. Other swatch images are read from their flat colour blocks.
Trim before you export
Remove colours from the loaded palette before saving, to choose which 30 go to Procreate or to drop duplicates from a long set.
For artists who work across apps
Digital painters, pixel artists, illustrators, designers and teachers move one palette between several apps.
Digital painters
Take a Photoshop or Clip Studio palette to Procreate on the iPad, or back again.
Pixel artists
Turn any palette into JASC PAL or GPL for Aseprite, or an ACT colour table.
Illustrators and designers
Share one palette as ASE for Adobe apps and CSS variables for the website.
Teachers
Hand out a class palette in every format in one ZIP, so each student opens it in their own app.
Where each format goes
ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) is the file Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop exchange through their Swatches panels. ACO is Photoshop's own swatch file. ACT is an Adobe colour table of up to 256 colours, the kind used for indexed colour in Photoshop.
GPL is GIMP's plain-text palette, also read by Krita, Inkscape and Aseprite. JASC PAL is the Paint Shop Pro text palette that Aseprite reads; Paint.NET keeps up to 96 colours in a .txt file of hex codes in its Palettes folder.
Procreate imports a .swatches file opened from the Files app as a new palette. Clip Studio Paint imports a .cls colour set from the menu of its Color Set palette, according to Clip Studio's manual.
CSS writes one custom property per colour, --palette-1 onward, ready to paste into a stylesheet. JSON lists each colour's hex, RGB and name for scripts and notes. SVG draws a labelled swatch sheet for print or the web, and the PNG card is an image of the palette to share or pin.
What survives a conversion
The colours always do, at 8 bits per channel. Names survive into ASE, ACO, GPL, JSON, SVG and the PNG card; Procreate, Clip Studio, ACT, PAL, Paint.NET and CSS store colours without names, and the note under the format picker says so before you export.
Some formats also have a ceiling: Procreate keeps 30 colours, Paint.NET 96 and ACT 256. A longer palette is written with its first colours only, so remove the ones you can spare first, or keep the full set in a format without a limit such as ASE or GPL.
Swatches a source file stores in CMYK are converted to RGB with the plain formula, without the document's colour profile, so a print colour is an approximation on screen. Colour-book entries in ACO files (Pantone and similar libraries) are skipped because the file holds only a reference, not the colour.
Reading swatch images
A PNG made by this tool carries its palette inside and reads back exactly. For any other swatch image, the converter keeps colours that fill solid blocks of at least about six by six pixels, in reading order, and ignores outlines, anti-aliased edges, text and the background colour at the corners. A swatch that matches the background is skipped with it, and an image with little flat colour is refused as a picture.
To take a palette from a photograph or a painting instead, the color palette extractor measures an image you load. The masterwork palette library has palettes from 30 museum paintings. Both export files this converter reads.
Further reading
The 3 pages below go further into the ideas the Palette Format Converter works with, and each opens on the site named beside it.
- CLSEncoderDecoder: the Clip Studio colour set format (github.com)
- procreate-swatches: reading and writing .swatches files (github.com)
- GIMP palettes (docs.gimp.org)
Tips from a working artist
From Sujith Puthran, artist and founder: what I actually do at the easel.
Keep a master copy of every palette as ASE or GPL: both hold names and have no small colour limit.
Before exporting to Procreate, remove colours until 30 or fewer are left, so you choose what it keeps.
Use All formats (.zip) when you share a palette with people who use different apps.
Open the CSS export in your editor and rename the variables to match your design tokens.
Questions about the Palette Format Converter
The 5 questions below cover the formats read and written, Krita files and lost colours, then privacy and accuracy.
Formats
Which formats can it read and write?
The formats it can read are ASE, ACO, GPL, Procreate .swatches, Clip Studio .cls, ACT, JASC PAL and Windows RIFF PAL, Paint.NET .txt, CSS, JSON, SVG and PNG. It writes all of these except RIFF PAL; .pal files are saved as JASC PAL.
Does it read Krita's .kpl palettes?
No, it does not read Krita's .kpl palettes directly. Krita imports and exports GPL palettes, so convert through GPL.
Why did my palette lose colours in Procreate?
A Procreate palette holds 30 swatches and ignores any beyond that, so the converter writes the first 30. Remove colours before exporting to choose which ones stay.
Privacy and accuracy
Does the Palette Format Converter upload my files?
No, the Palette Format Converter does not upload your files. The file is read and the new one is written by code running in your browser; it is never sent to a server.
Will the colours change?
No, for RGB colours. The tests write each format and read it back with the same 8-bit values. Only CMYK and Lab swatches from other files are converted, and CMYK without a colour profile is an approximation.
- File formats: help.clip-studio.com/…/Color_Set_palette.htm · checked 2026-09-29
- File formats: gitlab.gnome.org/…/gimppalette-load.c · checked 2026-09-29
Drop a palette file, choose where it is going and download it in the right format.
Free · No sign-up · Runs in your browser