Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

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 1, you can click the color chips at the bottom of the Tools panel to open the Color Picker (discussed next). But, as with most things in Photoshop, you’ve got plenty of other options, including the Eyedropper tool, the updated Color panel—which can now serve as a color picker that stays open—and the Swatches panel. This section teaches you how to use all of these features.

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 12-5). The Color Picker is a fine tool for choosing colors, and you’ll use it a lot because so many dialog boxes call it into action. It displays all the colors available in the color workspace (Calibrating Your Monitor) you’re using.

If you’re not trying to summon a specific color value—as you learned in the box on Understanding Bit Depth, each color has a numeric value—simply use the vertical, rainbow-colored slider to pick a range of colors, and then click inside the big, square color field on the left side of the Color Picker to tell Photoshop how light or dark you want that color to be. The color you pick shows up in the swatch at the upper right of the dialog box. Click OK to close the Color Picker, and your foreground color chip changes to the color you chose.

Note

You can summon a heads-up version of the Color ...