Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

Choosing Individual Colors

Once you decide on the colors you want to use, the next step is to summon ’em in Photoshop. As you learned in Chapter 2, you can use the color chips at the bottom of the Tools panel to choose colors quickly. But, as with most things in Photoshop, you’ve got plenty of other options, including the Color Picker, the Eyedropper tool, and the Color and Swatches panels, which are all discussed in this section.

The Color Picker

To choose the color you want to paint with, click the foreground color chip at the bottom of the Tools panel to open the Color Picker (Figure 13-6). The Color Picker is a fine tool for choosing colors, and it’s the one you’ll use most often because so many dialog boxes call it into action. If you’re not trying to summon a specific color value, simply pick a color by clicking it in the big, square color field on the left side of the dialog box; use the color slider to the right of the field to choose a different range of colors. The color you pick shows up in the smaller square swatch at the upper right of the box. Click OK to close the Color Picker, and your foreground color chip changes to the color you chose.

Note

You can also summon a heads-up version of the Color Picker while you’re painting: Just ⌘-Control-Option-click (Alt+Shift+right-click on a PC) your image. Flip ahead to Painting from Scratch to see it in action!

As you learned back in Chapter 3, each color mode identifies colors with specific numeric values. When you click within ...