Color scale provenance
When you capture colors from a real product, preset AI lays each one onto a 12-step scale (light at the top, dark at the bottom). Real products rarely hand over a clean 12-color ramp, so some steps come from a color that was actually seen, some are a best fit, and some are filled in to complete the scale. The row of small marks under the ramp in Color Studio tells you which is which, and the inspector rail on the right explains the step you have selected.
The three marks
| Mark | Step | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filled dot | Observed | A color was seen at this step's lightness. Safe to treat as your product's real value. |
| Outline dot | Inferred | A captured color was placed here, but its lightness sits far from this step. The position is a best fit to the scale, not a color seen at this lightness. |
| Faint outline dot | Extrapolated | No captured color was near this step. preset AI generated a value to complete the 12-step scale. |
Under the ramp you'll also see a one-line summary, for example 9 of 12 steps observed, 1 inferred, 2 extrapolated. The light end of a scale is the most common place to see inferred and extrapolated steps, because products often use few very light tints.
Why the marks aren't colored
The marks are neutral on purpose. An inferred or extrapolated step is not an error and not a warning: it is an honest note about where the value came from. Reserving red and amber for real problems keeps a best-fit position from reading as something broken.
Relabel to its true step
When a step is inferred, the inspector rail offers Relabel to its true-lightness step. This moves the captured color to the step whose lightness it actually matches, so it reads as observed there and the step it left becomes a generated value.
The action is always your choice, never automatic, because moving a color can collide with a step another captured color already holds. When the true step is free, the rail offers the move. When it is already taken, the rail says so and leaves the color where it is, still marked inferred.
What your AI tools see
This provenance travels with the token. An AI tool reading your design system through preset AI sees the same observed, inferred, and extrapolated marks, so it can defer on a best-fit step instead of treating the label as ground truth. Values are always exact; it is the position on the scale that carries the mark.
FAQ
Do inferred or extrapolated steps hurt my scale? No. Every step still has a usable value, and the scale stays complete and in order. The marks only tell you how confident preset AI is about each step's position, so you can decide whether to adjust it.
My color only appears on a few steps. Is something missing? No. preset AI keeps every color you captured and generates the rest of the ladder around them. The generated steps show the extrapolated mark so you can tell them apart from the ones it saw.
Why is a light color sitting on a light step it doesn't match? When nothing lighter was captured, the lightest color you have is placed on the lightest step it can reach, and marked inferred. Use Relabel to its true step to move it to the step its lightness matches, if that step is free.
Where do the marks come from? From the scan itself. preset AI measures how far each captured color sits from the step it lands on, and records that as the step's provenance when you save the palette. Re-seeding or regenerating a color replaces its scale, so its marks reflect the most recent capture.