Photoshop : Quick Tip - Sample colour from anywhere

By Jennifer Farley | Jul 27 2007 |

Up until Photoshop 7, you could use the Eyedropper to sample colour ONLY from within an open image. This colour would then become the Foreground colour.Since then the Eyedropper tool has grown up and left the nest and will now let you sample colours from anywhere - the open image, the palettes, the toolbar. You can even sample colours from outside Photoshop.

So if you wanted to pick a colour up from a website (very useful) or from your desktop, there is a little trick to it.

eyedroppertool


1. Make sure that you have one open document inside Photoshop.

2. Make sure that Photoshop is not fully maximised so that you can see other applications open behind it.

3. (Here’s the trick). Select the Eyedropper tool, then click once in the open document and drag the eyedropper tool outside of Photoshop. Let go of the mouse key over the colour you want to sample and voila!

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Posted by Jennifer Farley | Filed Under Photoshop Tips 

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Comments

2 Responses to “Photoshop : Quick Tip - Sample colour from anywhere”

  1. Cormac Moylan on August 30th, 2007 12:47 am

    Handy tip.
    I use Colorzilla, a plugin for Firefox, to grab sample colors from webpages. The extension places an eyedropper in the status bar of the browser. I love Colorzilla :)

  2. Jennifer on August 30th, 2007 8:42 am

    Thanks Cormac. I haven’t seen that plugin before but I’ll be adding it to my browser. Sounds very handy for sampling website colours for “inspirational” purposes!

    I’m amazed at how many cool plugins there are for Firefox. Have only just discovered the joys of Greasemonkey in the last few weeks!

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