Work Basics: Choosing Color (Video Included)

We already know how to choose a color using the Swatches palette. Unfortunately, the range of choice in it is very narrow (256 colors as default) and we (the masters of canvas and brush by now) may need some special paint. So, what about other colors? It may be a very simple task if you can find the required color on your picture.

1. Open an image to your choice.

2. From the Toolbox, select the Eyedropper Tool.

3. Find a color on the image that you'd like to paint with and click with the Eyedropper on it. Now look at the Foreground Color Selector in the Toolbox. The color is chosen (movie). Activate the Brush Tool and paint.

Very often, however, we are not completely satisfied with the colors either presented in the Swatches palette or defined with the Eyedropper. Use the Color Picker dialog box to customize the color.

3. Click on the Foreground Color Selector (upper square at the bottom of the Toolbox) to call the Color Picker. In the dialog box, select a color within the color field. If you can't see the required color, click a radio button - H (hue), S (saturation), B (brightness), R (Red), etc. - to change the color scheme and fine-tune the color with the slider (movie).

4. Similarly, you can customize your color by moving sliders in the Color palette. As default it presents RGB (Red-Green-Blue) sliders. However, you may choose HSB (Hue-Saturation-Brightness), CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) or any other color model available in the palette menu (movie).