Choosing Colours

Choosing Colours
Mac Tip #249/28-June-2006

In the previous Tip I showed how to save colours in the Color Picker. This time I show you how to choose colours. Call up the Color Picker from a program that supports it, such as TextEdit.

If necessary toggle the Toolbar button to display the Toolbar. The Toolbar button is the ‘glass bead’ at top right of the Color Picker window. Once the Toolbar is displayed you will see buttons for several color models.

From left you see the Color Wheel, Color Sliders, Color Palettes, Image Palettes and Crayons. Hover over any button to see a tooltip displaying its name.

Each Color Model offers different choices. Try each one and experiment with the various sliders and pop-ups — they should all be fairly self-evident. There are some features that aren’t so obvious though.

The magnifying glass

Whichever Color Model you choose there is a magnifying glass at the left end of the Color Bar. Click on that and then move the cursor around your screen.The magnifying glass zooms in on the tiny area beneath it. If you click at any point the magnifying glass picks up that colour and transfers it to the Color Bar. That means you can ‘pick up’ any colour from anywhere on your screen.

Color profiles

In the Color Sliders model you’ll see a small coloured icon to the left of the sliders pop-up. Click that icon and you can choose a Color Profile. Unfortunately Color profiles are beyond the scope of these Tips.

Click the image here for a larger version showing adding and renaming a colour, and creating your own image palette.

Create your own palette

In the Color Palettes model you can choose New from the List pop-up and then create a palette of colours of your own choosing. I used the magnifying glass to pick up colours from a photo and save them in a new palette.

Create your own Image Palette

In the Image Palette model choose New from File… from the Palette pop-up. Locate an image on your computer and click the Open button. The image you selected is loaded in. Click in different locations on the image to load colours into the Color Bar.

It’s surprising how much you can actually do with this often overlooked item on your Mac. There’s more to tell, of course, but I hope this Tip has given you some good ideas.

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