Monday, September 08, 2008

Photoshop Tip: Color picking from anywhere

Here's a quick Photoshop CS3 tip to sample colors from applications other than Photoshop:

  1. With a Photoshop document open, click on the color swatch/color chooser in the tools pallette to open up the color picker.
  2. Mouse over the Photoshop document so that the eyedropper tool becomes visible.
  3. Left-click your mouse in the Photoshop document and continue to hold the mouse button down.
  4. You can now move your mouse outside of the Photoshop document and sample colors from anywhere on your computer screen!
  5. Release your mouse button when you have found the color you desire.
  6. The sampled color is now the selected color in your color picker! Be sure to have the "Only Web Colors" checkbox unchecked to allow a wider gamut of colors to be sampled.
Note: This will only sample colors from what is visible on your screen. It will not allow you to move windows to find colors on a 'buried' screen. Be sure to set up your workspace so that the open Photoshop document and whatever your color sample source will be are both visible.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks, I tried all these other explanations I found but yours is the only one that actually says to hold the left mouse button. :)