swatch is a Python 3 command line interface created to extract Color Swatch data from .aco files and save them as a simple .csv. It can also work in revers and generate a .aco file based on a .csv data file.

Install from GitHub repository:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/kdybicz/adobe-color-swatch

usage: swatch extract [-h] -i INPUT -o OUTPUT [-v]

Extract .aco input file to a .csv output file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INPUT, --input INPUT
                        input file
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        output file
  -v, --verbose         increase output verbosity

usage: swatch generate [-h] -i INPUT -o OUTPUT [-v]

generate .aco output file based on .csv input file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INPUT, --input INPUT
                        input file
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        output file
  -v, --verbose         increase output verbosity

.aco file format parser and generator were created based on Adobe Color Swatch File Format Specification. Script is supporting both version 1 and 2 of the Color Swatch format.

.csv file is using custom format:

name,space_id,color
RGB Magenta 16-bit,0,#FF00FF
RGB Magenta 32-bit,0,#FFFF0000FFFF
CMYK Magenta 16-bit,2,#FF00FFFF
CMYK Magenta 32-bit,2,#FFFF0000FFFFFFFF
75% Gray,8,#1D4C

Supported color spaces

NOT supported color spaces

To validate that the .aco file generation is working properly I decided on the following process:

• export few default Color Swatches from Adobe Photoshop 2022
• extract them to .csv files and make sure data in that files are matching to what is in the Adobe Photoshop
• generate new .aco files from .csv acquired in the previous step
• compare original .aco files with ones regenerated from .csv using:

hexdump examples/utf.aco > utf.aco.hex
hexdump utf-new.aco > utf-new.aco.hex
diff utf.aco.hex utf-new.aco.hex -y

• import new .aco files into Adobe Photoshop and compare them with original Swatches

I'm aware that original .aco files contain some additional bytes at the end of the files. Those bytes which will not be present in .aco files generated by the script. These bytes might be related to Custom color spaces, which are not supported by this script.

Nevertheless, I was able to successfully import generated .aco files back into the Adobe Photoshop and use them in my work!

For all supported environments:

tox --parallel

Note: running tests for all supported Python versions require to have Python interpreters for those versions to be installed.

For particular environment:

tox -e py39

For running tests in development environment:

tox --devenv venv -e py39
. venv/bin/activate
pytest

Install a project in editable mode:

 pip3 install -e .

Building the packages:

./venv/bin/python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

Checking if build packages are valid:

twine check dist/*

Uploading to pypi:

twine upload -r pypi dist/*