Adobe Photoshop Basics

In addition to the color picker dialog box, Photoshop provides two palettes for selecting color: the Color Palette, and the Swatch Palette.

The color palette provides a color ramp along the bottom of the palette for quickly picking an approximate color. As you move your cursor over the color ramp, it changes to an eyedropper. Clicking in the color ramp changes the foreground color. Alt/Option clicking on the color ramp changes the background color. The current foreground and background colors are displayed in the color palette in addition to the toolbox.

If a color is out of gamut, the color palette will also display the gamut alert.

The sliders in the Color palette allow you to refine your color choice by adjusting each slider or by entering values into the numeric entry fields. Right-clicking/Control-clicking on the color ramp allows you to change the way the color ramp is displayed. The Color Palette menu also allows you to change the way the color ramp is displayed, and allows you to change the sliders displayed on the color palette for selecting colors using RGB, HSB, CMYK, or other color spaces.

We've learned so many options for choosing colors already, it's hard to imagine ever needing another one, but Photoshop has it! Take a look at the swatches palette now.

The default swatches are a generic set of colors, but the true value of the Swatches palette is in its ability to load custom swatch collections. With a set of custom color swatches you can restrict yourself to specific colors without having to remember any numeric color values. For instance, you can create a custom swatch from the colors in a company logo, and use those colors when working on other projects for the company.

Here's a few color swatch actions you can try on your own:

• Left click selects a foreground color
• Alt-click/Option-click selects background color in Photoshop 6.0. In Photoshop 7.0, Ctrl-click/Command-click selects the background color.
• When you move your cursor over an empty spot in the swatch palette, it changes to a paint bucket and you can click to add a new color to the swatches palette. (In Photoshop 6, you'll be prompted to name the swatch.)
• In Photoshop 6.0, when you hold the Ctrl/Command key down and move your cursor over a swatch, the cursor changes to a scissors icon and you can click to delete a color. In Photoshop 7.0, use the Alt/Option key to delete a color.
• To change the color of a swatch, select the new color using the color picker, move the cursor over the color swatch that you want to replace, and hold down the shift key. The cursor changes to a paint bucket and you can click to replace the old color with a new color.
• In Photoshop 6, you can double click on a color to rename it.
• You can revert to the default swatch palette by choosing Reset Swatches from the Swatches palette menu.
• You can also load, replace, and save swatch collection from the Swatches palette menu.

In the exercise that follows you will learn how to create a custom swatch collection from the colors in an image. There's also some additional notes for users of version 6.

Next > Custom Swatch Collection