COLR/CPAL Fonts

Microsoft-style color fonts are fonts that contain two additional tables: CPAL (Color Palette) and COLR (Color). These color fonts work like layered color fonts, but they export all color layers to a single font file instead of exporting one font file per layer.

Defining the Color Palette

In File → Font Info… → Font, add the Color Palettes custom parameter. Click its value to edit the color palette.

Click the plus  button to add additional colors to the palette. Each color is identified by a color index counting up from 0. Change colors by clicking a color  swatch and choosing a different value with the color picker. Select a row and click the minus  button to delete a color.

Multiple color palettes can be defined. Add additional color palettes by choosing Add Palette from the gear  menu. Click the column heading of a palette to remove it with Remove Palette. See COLR/CPAL Fonts: Exporting for details on choosing a palette for each instance.

Confirm the edits to the color palettes with OK, or click Cancel to discard all edits and keep the palettes as they were.

Master Layer as Fallback

CPAL/COLR color fonts are not supported by all applications. In case an app cannot handle the color information, it displays the master layer. The master is not displayed in apps that support CPAL/COLR color fonts.

Color Palette Layers

Add color layers by clicking the plus  button in the Layers palette (Window → Palette, Cmd-Opt-P) and choose Color Palette from the context menu on the layer. Pick a color from the color palette by clicking the color swatch to the right of the layer name. Choose either a predefined color or the asterisk (*) option. The asterisk option uses the color that the font user defines. Glyphs previews this color in black (or in white, for the dark system appearance).

Color Palette layers are named Color and the color index from the Color Palettes custom parameter. Multiple layers of a glyph can have the same color, and some colors of the palette might not be used at all in a glyph. Not all glyphs need to have the same number of color layers: some might only have a single color layer, while others have multiple layers for each color.

Exporting

Exported instances of CPAL/COLR fonts use the first color palette by default. Add the Color Palette for CPAL custom parameter to an instance in File → Font Info… → Exports to choose a different color palette for that instance. Note that the color palette IDs start at 0 for the first palette. Add additional palettes as described in Defining the Color Palette.

Remove all colors from an instance by adding an Export COLR Table custom parameter and unchecking it. This will use just the fallback layer and discard the CPAL and COLR tables.

Glyphs can also convert a CPAL/COLR font to an SVG color font by adding the following custom parameters in File → Font Info… → Exports: