Adobe Photoshop Color File Format

ACO Files

In Adobe Photoshop, the active swatches palette can be saved to, or loaded from, an ACO (Adobe COlor) file.

In Mac OS X and Windows, the file extension of an ACO file is '.aco'.
In Mac OS 9 and below, the file type is '8BCO'.

Two versions of the palette format exist:

A version 1 palette lists the coordinates of each color in a specified color space.
A version 2 palette lists both the coordinates and the name of each color.
- The name is what you see displayed as a rollover when the mouse cursor hovers over the color in the palette.

When saving an ACO file, Photoshop releases prior to 7.0 wrote only a version 1 palette. When loading an ACO file today, these old versions of Photoshop read the version 1 palette and ignore any version 2 palette that may be present.

Photoshop 7.0 writes a version 1 palette followed by a version 2 palette. When loading an ACO file, it reads the version 2 palette, if present. Otherwise, it reads the version 1 palette.

Palettes

Each palette in an ACO file is a series of 16-bit big-endian words.

Macs are big-endian. On Wintel machines, it is necessary to swap the bytes of each 16-bit word.

The palette begins with a two-word header:

version (0 or 1)

nc (number of colors)

The header is followed by nc color specs. In a version 1 ACO file, each color spec occupies five words:

color space

In a version 2 ACO file, those five words are followed by the color name in the following format:

len + 1

len words (UTF-16 representation of the name)

Example: The name "A2" appears as hexadecimal 00 03 41 62 00 (ASCII "A2" = 4162; len=2, len+1=3).

Color Specs

The table below describes the process for converting a color spec (three or four 16-bit values) to its Photoshop color picker equivalent (three or four 8-bit values).

Example:

range: 0..65535
H[0..360°)=w/182.04

Interpretation:

The range of values for this 16-bit word is 0 to 65535, inclusive.

When the range begins with 0, the word is an unsigned int.

When the range begins with a negative number, the word is a signed int.

The color coordinate H is determined by this word. In the Photoshop color picker, H ranges from 0° inclusive to 360° exclusive. To calculate a value of H in the color picker's range, divide w by 182.04.

The mathematical notation [...] denotes a closed interval that includes the values adjacent to the brackets.

The notation [...) denotes a half-open interval that excludes the value adjacent to the parenthesis.

The Photoshop color picker rounds fractions down to whole numbers.

#	Name	w	x	y	z
0	RGB	range: 0..65535 R[0..256)=w/256	range: 0..65535 G[0..256)=x/256	range: 0..65535 B[0..256)=y/256	0
1	HSB	range: 0..65535 H[0..360°)=w/182.04	range: 0..65535 S[0..100%]=x/655.35	range: 0..65535 B[0..100%]=y/655.35	0
2	CMYK	range: 0..65535 C[0..100%]=100-w/655.35	range: 0..65535 M[0..100%]=100-x/655.35	range: 0..65535 Y[0..100%]=100-y/655.35	range: 0..65535 K[0..100%]=100-z/655.35
7	Lab	range: 0..10000 L*[0..100]=w/100	range: -12800..12700 a*[-128..127]=x/100	range: -12800..12700 b*[-128..127]=y/100	0
8	Grayscale	range: 0..10000 R,G,B[0..256)=w/39.0625	0	0	0
9	Wide CMYK	range: 0..10000 C[0..100%]=w/100	range: 0..10000 M[0..100%]=x/100	range: 0..10000 Y[0..100%]=y/100	range: 0..10000 K[0..100%]=z/100

In addition to the above, Photoshop 7.0 can read color spaces #13 and #15. I have not been able to identify these two spaces.

Photoshop 7.0 can not read color spaces #3-6, #10-12, #14. Plug-ins may be available that can read these and other color spaces.

Information sources

I deduced the format of ACO files by conducting experiments and by reading the following published sources:

Reverse-Engineering of the Adobe Color File Format by Chris Berry.
Adobe Photoshop File Formats Specification by Adobe Systems Incorporated and Thomas Knoll.

For information about the format of Adobe Color Book (ACB) files, see: The Unofficial Photoshop Color Book File Format Specification by Ates Goral.

This page was contributed to the public domain by Larry Tesler, 9-Oct-2004.