Choosing a Color Picker Part 2 – Mac OS 10.5
The Mac OS comes with its own excellent color picker. It can be very simple or allow for complex development of a specific color set. It might be thought that the simplest setting is the crayon configuration as seen below.
Crayon Based Interface
But to get to the smallest and simplest color selection go to the color palettes and selecting from the drop down Palette - Apple. This supplies direct access to a simple set of basic colors with names you recognize. If this were the set you would like to have access to in all instances of using Colors just grab from the color next to the name and move the block of the color to the palette spaces below. If you need more space click and drag from the small circle graphic above the cancel button.
Move chosen color to add to Apple Color Pallette
To reset the block colors just replace the color with a selection of white. Using this configuration of colors will provide the most basic set of colors to use in Photoshop and other programs. You can create a custom preset by pulling down the Menu associated with the gear. Here select new and add colors from the colors from the lower palette. Custom names can be added for each color and the entire palette set can given a useful name.
Giving Custom Color Set a Name
The next simplest color selection technique is to pick colors from the crayon interface. Just like Crayola each color has a colloquial name to associate with the color. For example Red is maraschino, Blue is blueberry, and Black is Licorice.
This is limited but is can be fun for the youngsters. At the begining of the article is a screen shot of the Crayon Color Picker Interface.
The next choice supplies the control to create and save specific images by using a color wheel to pick from a much larger full color image and additional control to adjust saturation. Colors at the edge of the wheel have zero brightness and moving towards the center of the wheel increases the brightness until it reaches pure white. The slider on the right controls the saturation. The top position is a fully saturated color while at the bottom is completely desaturated.
Color Wheel Interface
If a more advanced and capable color selection is needed the color slider interface may be better. Besides the sliders selection along three axis there is an option to change the color model. Unless you are a well versed in color theory the HSB will be easiest to use.
Color Sliders
Selection of Slider set
Select from drop down menu from three different color models and a grey only option. Here the HSB (hue/saturation/brightness) is picked. To use this best move the saturation and brightness to there maximum position (100%) this way the hue can be visualized best. Pick the color wanted. Then adjust the saturation and brightness sliders to get the color you want. If you have an exact numerical recipe you can input it directly into the fields on the right.
This interface has another often overlooked capability. On the left of the pull down menu is a color filled square icon. To select different color profiles for color management click on this icon and a full list from your computer is provided. By selecting different profiles the color recipe is changed to conform to the new profile.
Drop Down Menu of Color Profiles
Additional color sets are available using the color palette dialogue box. There are the built in sets including Web Safe Colors, Developer, which are the colors that are used in system architecture, crayons as a list, and the Apple set covered earlier..
Looking at the Web Safe Colors, along the right is a color coded scroll bar to quickly select the family of colors and the swatch of colors are displayed along with their hexadecimal code.
Web Safe Color Palette
Crayon Palette as a List
Along with color palettes are image palletes that lest you pcik a colro from a full spectrum images or a picture. Here the Left is bright colros, left is the least saturated colors and the middle is the most saturated color. Moving up or down will select different hues.
To pick a color from a user selected picture. Select from the Palette drop down menu "New from File" and find the image you want to load. The image will be able to be selcted from the image drop down menu and is persitant so unless you use the "Remove" command to delete it the image will be available for all subsequent sessions.
To select the image desired place the cursor on the color in the image and click this will load the image into the color preview box.
Color Selection from a Preloaded Image
All the colro dialogue boxes have a small magnifying glass icon next to the color previerw box. If this is clicked on the cursor become a color selector denoted by the large magnifying glass. This can be used to pick a color from anywhere on the monitor.
Screen Color Picker
The last color selection interface lets web developers interact with colors as hexadecimal numbers. The sliders can be used to create a color and that colors code is displayed or you can type in the code and see the corresponding color.
Web Colors
That covers most of the color picking ability built into the Mac. The nice thing about it is that it is accessible in most of the Mac software since it is in the system.
The hardest thing is choosing the best method that improves your workflow.