Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

Chapter 7: Basic Image Retouching 195

Choosing the Color

You Want

Choosing the Color You Want

So far, the color corrections you’ve been reading about in this chapter have all

done most of the color assigning for you. But a lot of the time, you want to be able

to tell Elements what colors to work with—like when you’re selecting the color for

a background or Fill layer (page 166), or when you want to paint on an image.

Although you can use any of the millions of colors your screen can display, Ele-

ments loads only two colors at a time. You choose these colors using the Fore-

ground and Background color squares at the bottom of the Toolbox (see

Figure 7-14).

Foreground and Background mean just what they sound like—use the Back-

ground color to fill in backgrounds, and use the Foreground color with the Ele-

ments tools, like the Brush or the Paint Bucket. You can use as many colors as you

want, of course. The color-picking tools at the bottom of the Toolbox let you con-

trol the color you’re using in a number of different ways:

• Reset default colors. Click the tiny black and white squares to return to the

standard settings of black for the Foreground color and white for the Back-

ground color.

• Switch Foreground and Background colors. Click the little curved arrows above

and to the right of the squares, and your Background color becomes the Fore-

ground color, and vice versa. This is very helpful