Poking around the Color Picker in Photoshop

When you click either the Foreground or Background color swatch in the Toolbox (also called the Tools palette), you’re transported magically to the Color Picker. This huge dialog box, allows you to select a color from the color spectrum (called a color slider) or to define your color numerically.

Choosing a color visually is fine for Web or multimedia work, but not recommended for print work, of course. Among other reasons, your monitor uses an RGB (red, green, blue) color model, whereas printers use a CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) model. For more on this and other color management issues, see “Color Management Essentials,” later. To choose a color visually with the Color Picker, follow these steps:

1. Click either the Foreground or Background color swatch in the Toolbox.
The Color Picker dialog box appears.

2. Click in the narrow color slider to get in the ballpark for the color you want.
You can also move the slider.

3. To fine-tune your choice, click in the large square on the left.
This square area is called a color field. The circular icon targets your selected shade. The dialog box displays your new chosen color as well as the original foreground or background color. The numeric values also change accordingly to represent the exact shade you’ve chosen. Alternatively, if you know the numeric values of the color you want to use, you can plug in the values in the text boxes on the right side of the Color Picker.

4. When you’re satisfied with the color, click OK to exit the Color Picker dialog box.

You can do pretty much the same thing in the Color palette that you can do with the Color Picker. I prefer the Color palette.