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Using the Color Picker

When you click on the foreground or background color box on the Photoshop toolbox, the Color Picker opens. This dialog lets you specify a color out of a range of 16 million:

Use the vertical color slider to choose a color. The slider displays 256 colors, and represents the range for the field that’s selected on the right side of the dialog. For example, below, hue (H) is selected, so the colors in the slider represent hue:

The large color field to the left of the color slider represents the range of variations for the selected color. This range is based on the unselected attributes—in this case, saturation and brightness, with saturation displayed horizontally and brightness displayed vertically. The white circle in the upper left-hand corner of the color field represents the specific color selected. You can use your mouse to move this circle to a new area in the color field, thereby adjusting saturation and brightness (in the example above). The slider and color field work the same way when choosing Lab (luminosity), RGB (red, green, blue), and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) values.

As you change the color, the preview box to the right of the color slider displays the new color on top and the original color on bottom. If the new color can’t be printed in Photoshop, the alert box is displayed. This is the triangle to the right of the preview box. You can click the triangle or the color box below it to adjust the color so that it’s printable.

The cube below the alert box appears when a color is selected that isn’t Web-safe. You can click the cube or the color box below it to use the suggested Web-safe color.

You can also enter specific values directly into the fields. The # field at the bottom represents the hexadecimal value of the color, which you can also enter directly.

The Color Picker also gives you access the predefined colors, like Pantone, Focoltone, and Trumatch, among others. To access these colors, click the Custom button. This opens the Custom Colors dialog:

From the Book menu, select the brand of colors you want to see. Then use the color slider to choose a range. From the menu of specific colors on the left, select the color, or type a color using your keyboard.

Once you’ve chosen a color from the Color Picker or Custom Colors dialog, click OK. The color now appears in the foreground or background color box on the toolbox:

Tip:

As with the color boxes on the toolbox, you can move the mouse pointer over any area of your image and click to “sample” or select a color from the image.