The Eyedropper Tool |
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Color is important after all... |
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| Start at the Beginning I'll start at the beginning, with an explanation of how the tool works. It has three main modes of use, the most helpful of which is the default, 'Point Sample'. 
Left click anywhere on your image to place the color of the pixel on which you click into the
top color store on your palette. If you left clicked in the middle of a red apple for example,
the square shaded dark grey on the palette shown here would turn to the specific shade of red
on which you clicked.Zooming in can be a useful technique here. You can view individual pixels more clearly, and be very exact in your color choice. |
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| Using our red apple example then, say we select the 5x5 square average mode. Instead of
giving us the exact color of the pixel we click on, it takes the average color, also including the
other 24 pixels surrounding it, and gives us a blend of all those shades of red. The effect of this is better shown using a rather extreme situation. In our demonstration image, the top left image was the eyedropper source. In each case the middle pixel was clicked, but the top right image used a single pixel, the bottom left a 3x3 square, and the bottom right a 5x5 square. Because the middle pixel is red, the 1x1 result was also red. The 3x3 result is a mix of only red and green, so we obtain an olive result. The final 5x5 average includes equal amounts of red, green and blue, so we end up with grey! This is just the effect of averaging color values. Webmasters - Take Note! Now there is one extra feature with the eyedropper tool that isn't displayed on the options toolbar. It's especially useful to anyone who makes web pages, or uses HTML code. Right clicking on an image displays the extra option 'Copy Color as HTML'. This copies to the clipboard the HTML color code for the color of that single pixel. Please note this does not take into account the averaging function, even if it is selected in the options toolbar. It will only copy the color code for the pixel you clicked on. No more remembering all those hex numbers though! :) The Problems There are a few problems and inadequacies with the eyedropper tool. Nothing too serious, or that can't be worked around easily, but only when you know how. The first is just a practical reminder. Your image is not your color palette. It's useful to be able to just grab a color from the image, but if you are regularly swapping between five or six colors, this will become tedious very quickly. |
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The other inadequacy in the eyedropper tool is that you can only grab colors from the image you have
open. "Well where else are you gonna get them from!?" People say to me. Well... Anywhere! Why shouldn't you grab colors from anywhere on the screen, even from other programs! Say you want a color from your desktop wallpaper, should you have to find the image, open it, take the color from there, then go back to what you were doing? No! Or say you want a color that isn't from an image at all! Part of a title bar, or a menu item. Why limit yourself to colors in images? The Photoshop Elements eyedropper is great for working within images, but I highly recommend having a utility to hand for those situations when you need more functionality. I found I often wanted to just click a button and grab colors from anywhere, so I created a tool to do just that! |
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Kind Regards
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A page about the Eyedropper Tool
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The eyedropper tool is ideal for quickly picking up with a color you were using earlier. No more
remembering RGB values or recording palettes, just click on the color you're looking for. There
are definite limitations with this method if used incorrectly though, as discussed further down.
