Pick a Color… Any Color (Photoshop)

So you’re browsing the net, just having a nice time surfing, and on somebody’s web page you see a color that stops you right in your tracks! “Wow, this is gorgeous!” you think. And you wish there were some way to get that exact color onto a scrapbook page.

But how? I mean, it’s not like you can bring your Eyedropper tool out of Photoshop and onto the Internet to grab that color… right? Wrong! Not only is it possible… it’s oh-so-simple. I’ll show you how…

Let’s say your favorite color is robin’s egg blue. Sure, you can go to the Color Picker and search around until you find a color that comes close, but why do that when you can get the real deal?

Step 1: Open a document in Photoshop

Step 2: Align your workspace

Position your Photoshop workspace and the portion of the web page with the color you like side by side on your monitor. You might have to minimize one or both of them to make them both visible at the same time.

Step 3: Set your tools

In Photoshop, click on the Eyedropper tool and go up to the Options Bar and choose one of the various sample sizes:

• Point Sample will give you the color of the one pixel you click on
• 3 by 3 Average will give you an “average” sampling of three square pixels around the one you click on
• 5 by 5 Average will give you an average sampling of five square pixels around the one you click on
• 11×11 Average…. etc.

It’s usually best to choose somewhere in the range of at least 5 by 5 to 11×11 (possibly larger, depending upon how complicated or unusual the color in the selection area is) because the spot you choose may have subtle variations in color that you’d want to capture for a truer representation of the color you want.

Step 4: Make your selection

• With the Eyedropper tool still selected, click anywhere inside your document, and holding down the left mouse key, drag your eyedropper tool off your Photoshop workspace, and onto the web page (or any other spot on your desktop) where you want to select color.

• Then let go of the mouse, and voila! The color you select from your desktop will show up as your Foreground color in your Color Chips.

And that’s how you can choose any color… anywhere… anytime to use in your digital creations!

One Caveat: The Eyedropper settings affect the Magic Wand tool. If you’re trying to make a selection in a very small area, you will need to return to Point Sample, or it will select unwanted areas because it samples more pixels.

Bonus tip!

To save your new favorite color as a color swatch to use again in other projects, open your Swatches panel in the Panel Bin (you may have to go up to the Menu Bar and click on Window, then click on Swatches to make it appear in the Panel Bin) and you’ll see your selection of existing color swatches.

• Click on the little fly-out menu at the top right corner of the Swatches panel and then click on New Swatch.
• You can then name your color swatch whatever you like and click OK.

Your new color will be added to the last row of your Swatches panel so you can use it again and again!

Download a PDF version of this “Pick A Color” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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