Discover Color Reproduction

So, say you want to duplicate and use an exact color that you've seen somewhere and have it scanned in to your computer.....  

Taking this color data collection stuff a little bit further (see how I'm rounding out your education already?)...Once you have the sample points

go to the Info palette

and you can write down (how about the Notes tool) or open up your color picker right away

and enter the exact RGB coordinates to get the exact color. (this works great for stuff you've seen in print mags or photos and 'accidentally scanned in' but wanted to reproduce the same color).

Yes all these perrty colors still boils down to mathematical numbers, but this ensures you can get precisely the shade of color that you want (reproduced).

Just punch in the coordinates as shown.

Now you can do something like use that color that you just locked down on and create a new layer or background. Edit: Fill is one way of doing this. 

Do this onto a brand new layer please or you'll wipe out everything else on the current layer. The easiest way to 'fill' is alt/opt backspace with your foreground color (which happens to be the custom color).

You can see our little color samplers are still in place and that we've filled a new layer with the custom color that we've chosen (haven't we?) from one of the samples. Now you know how to get an exact color and understand more about Photoshop.