Inside Photoshop® CS

Trick 3: Borrowing an Image's Color Palette

Actually, you'll learn how to steal an image's colors in this exercise because the word borrowing strongly suggests that you will put something back when you're done.

Okay, here is the scenario: First, you cannot copyright or trademark the use of certain colors. You can get in a lot of trouble borrowing corporate colors for your own logo, but I'm talking about a beautiful autumn day or, in the case of this example, a poster that uses such nice colors together that you would like to sample and repurpose the color combination.

Palletizing the colors in an image is easy. The hard part is knowing what to do with the colors when you're done! Gradients can command attention by using a color “set” like you ...