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Working with Colors and Painting

Setting the Foreground and Background Color

The Photoshop toolbox contains four color controls you can use to set foreground and background color:

The large box to the left represents the foreground color, and the large box to the right and beneath it represents the background color.

The foreground color is applied using the Paint Bucket , Pencil , Brush , and Type  tools, as well as when you drag the Smudge  tool while holding down the Alt key (or the Option key, for Mac users). In addition, the foreground color is used to begin any custom gradient you create, and fills any shape created with the shape tools. It’s also used to fill a selection when you choose Fill or Stroke from the Edit menu.

The background color is applied using the eraser  tools and ends any custom gradient you create. In addition, you can apply the background color to a selection by pressing the Ctrl and Backspace keys (for Windows) or Command and Delete keys (for Mac).

To change the foreground or background color, click the appropriate box and select a new color from the Color Picker dialog. You can also quickly reverse the foreground and background colors by clicking the small two-way arrow between the two boxes:

To quickly restore the default colors (black and white), click the small black and white boxes in the lower left-hand corner:

Tip:

You can move the mouse pointer over any area of your image and click to “sample” or select a color from the image.