Is there a way to compile a custom colour palette, storing all colours used in a piece of work? Such a drag to copy and paste the index every time you want to repeat the colour.
Apologies if this has already been answered.

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

It sounds like you're looking for Swatches. Help menu > Inkscape manual > Attributes > Fill and Stroke Paint > Custom Swatches. Using the gui, Object menu > Fill and Stroke > Fill tab and the swatches button looks kind of like an empty picture frame -- just an empty square with blue "frame"

Hi

It's quite easy to create a "custom" palette.
There are different approaches depending on your requirements.

The easiest but also most cumbersome is to "Hand-Edit" a palette file using a regular text editor.
To have a look at the included palettes in Inkscape have a look at the files in Installdir/Inkscape/Share/Palettes - where your Installdir might be C:\ProgramFiles or something similar.
The file's will have a content like this;



The numbers columns are the Red Green and Blue Component values in the range 0 to 255.
Forth Column is a Text Comment which will show up when your mouse pointer is hovering over the color in the color menu.

Another approach to generate the palette from an existing image is to use the automatic function in GIMP and copy the palette file to Inkscape.
A detailed howto; http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/ss/Color-Scheme-From-Photo.htm

The palette can also be generated from a program or script - for a python approach see this; http://www.filewatcher.com/m/PaletteGen.py.2679-0.html

To change the palettes in inkscape see one image from another thread on the forum;
(This is the least documented feature in Inkscape!! ) ;



Good Luck.
RGDS
Ragnar

If you just want to re-use the colours from an existing object in the drawing, you can use the tool to set the fill or stroke.

Thanks for all advice. Much appreciated:))