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. Holding Alt (Option on Mac) while 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. At the far right of the color ramp, there are two larger black and white swatches. This makes it a bit easier to select pure white or pure black from the color ramp.
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 Mac) 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.
