So far, the color corrections you’ve read about in this chapter have all done most of the color assigning for you. But a lot of the time, you want to tell Elements what colors to work with—like when you’re selecting the color for a Background or Fill layer, or when you want to paint on an image.
Although you can use any of the millions of colors your screen can display, Elements loads only two colors at a time. You choose these colors using the Foreground and Background color squares at the bottom of the Tools panel (see Figure 7-16).
Figure 7-16. The top square displays the Foreground color (here, that’s blue); the bottom square displays the Background color (yellow). To quickly switch to the standard colors—black and white—either click the two tiny squares labeled here or press D. Click the curved double-headed arrow or press X to swap the Foreground and Background colors.
Foreground and Background mean just what they sound like—use the Foreground color with tools like the Brush or the Paint Bucket, and the Background color to fill in backgrounds. You can use as many colors in your images as you want, of course, but you can only use two at any given time.
The color-picking tools at the bottom of the Tools panel let you control the color you’re using in a number of different ways:
Reset default colors. Click the tiny black and white squares above the upper left of the Foreground square in a single column Toolbox (or below and to the left of the Foreground square if you have two columns) to return to the standard settings: black for the Foreground color and white for the Background color. Pressing the D key does the same thing.
Switch Foreground and Background colors. Click the little curved two-headed arrow above and to the right of the squares, and the Background color becomes the Foreground color, and vice versa. This is helpful when you’ve inadvertently made your color selection in the wrong box. (Say you set the Foreground color to yellow, but you actually meant to make the Background color yellow; just click these arrows and you’re all set.) You can also press X instead.
Change either the Foreground or Background color to whatever color you want. Click either square to call up the Color Picker (explained on Choosing Colors) to make your new choice. There’s no limit on the number of colors you can select in Elements. (Well, technically there is, but it’s in the millions, so you should find enough choices for anything you want to do.)
You have a few different ways to select your Foreground and Background colors. The next few sections show you how to use the Color Picker, the Eyedropper tool (to pick a color from an existing image), and the Color Swatches panel.
When working with some of Elements’ tools, like the Type tool, you can choose a color in the tool’s Options bar. Adobe knows that, given a choice, most people prefer to work with either Color Swatches or the Color Picker, so they’ve come up with a clever way to accommodate both camps, as shown in Figure 7-17.
Figure 7-17. Whether you prefer using Color Swatches or the Color Picker, you can choose your favorite (for most tools) in the Options bar. Click the color sample in the box to bring up the Color Picker, or, if you’re a Swatcher, click the arrow to the right of the box to reveal the Color Swatches panel.
Tip
If you have an iPad, you have another way to create colors for Elements. Adobe’s Color Lava app lets you use your fingers to blend colors and then send them to Elements so you can use them there. Head to www.photoshop.com/products/mobile/colorlava for more info about this app.
Figure 7-18 shows the Color Picker, which has an intimidating number of options, but, most of the time, you don’t need them all. Choosing a color is as simple as clicking wherever you see the color you want. Here’s how to use the Color Picker:
Figure 7-18. For many beginners, the most important parts of Elements’ Color Picker are the vertical rectangular slider in the middle (called, appropriately enough, the Color Slider) and the big square box, called the Color Field. Use the slider to get the general color you want, and then click in the field to pick the exact shade.
Click the Foreground or Background color square in the Tools panel.
Elements launches the Color Picker. Some tools—like the Paint Bucket (The Paint Bucket) and the Selection brush’s mask color option—also use the Color Picker. It works the same way no matter how you get to it.
Choose the color range you want to select from.
Use the vertical Color Slider in the middle of the dialog box to slide through the spectrum until you see the color you want in the big, square Color Field.
Click the spot in the Color Field where you see the exact shade you want.
You can keep clicking around and watch the color in the window’s top box change to reflect what you click. The bottom box shows your original color for comparison.
Click OK.
The color you selected now appears in the Foreground or Background square in the Tools panel (depending on which one you clicked in step 1).
That’s the basic way to use the Color Picker. The box on Paint by Number explains how to enter a numeric value for your color if you know it, or how to change the shades the Color Picker offers you.
Note
You’re not limited to Elements’ Color Picker. You can use your operating system’s Color Picker instead, if you prefer (maybe you’re used to working with the Windows Picker, for example).
Note
Windows: To change the Color Picker, in the Elements Editor, go to Edit→Preferences→General. At the top of the dialog box, choose Windows from the Color Picker menu. Now when you click a color square, the Windows Color Picker opens up looking pretty feeble, with just a few colored squares and some white ones. But if you click Define Custom Colors, it expands, giving you access to most of the same features as in the Adobe picker. (The plain white squares are like little pigeonholes where you can save your color choices.)
Note
Mac: Go to Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor→Preferences→General and select Apple from the Color Picker menu at the top of the dialog box. You might prefer Apple’s color picker if you like to choose colors from a color wheel. There’s even a fun view where you choose from a box of crayons. You can save colors in Apple’s color picker by dragging them from the color field at the top of the window into the squares at the bottom. Then click a square to choose that color the next time you want it.
If you’ve ever repainted your house, you’ve probably had the frustrating experience of spotting the exact color you want somewhere, but you had no way of capturing that color. That’s one problem you’ll never run into in Elements, thanks to the handy Eyedropper tool. It lets you sample any color on your monitor and make it the Foreground color in Elements. If you can get a color onto your computer, Elements can grab it.
Sampling a color (that is, snagging it for your own use) couldn’t be simpler with the Eyedropper: Just move your cursor over the color you want and click. It even works on colors that aren’t in Elements, as explained in Figure 7-19. Sampling is perfect for projects like scrapbook pages where you want to use, say, the color from an event program cover as a theme color for the project. Just scan the program and sample the color with the Eyedropper.
By now, you may think that Elements has more eyedroppers than your medicine cabinet. But this is the official Elements Eyedropper tool that has its own place in the Tools panel. It’s one of the easiest tools to use:
Click the Eyedropper in the Tools panel or press I.
Your cursor changes into a tiny eyedropper.
Move the Eyedropper over the color you want to sample.
If you want to watch the color in the Foreground color square change as you move the Eyedropper around, hold the mouse button down as you go.
Click when you see the color you want.
Elements loads your color choice as the Foreground color so it’s ready to use. (To set the Background color instead, Alt-click/Option-click the color you want.)
If you want to keep your new color around so you can use it later without having to get the Eyedropper out again, save it in the Swatches panel. The next section teaches you how.
Figure 7-19. To use the Eyedropper tool to sample colors outside of Elements, start by clicking anywhere in your Elements file. Then, while still holding your mouse button down, move your cursor over to the non-Elements object (a web page, for instance), until it’s over the area you want to sample. When you let go, the new color appears in Elements’ Foreground color square. (If you let go before you get to the non-Elements object, this trick won’t work.) Here, the Eyedropper (circled) is sampling the aqua color from a photo in Windows 7’s Windows Photo Viewer. If you don’t have a big monitor, it can take a bit of maneuvering to get the program windows positioned so that you can perform this procedure.
Tip
Since there may be some slight pixel-to-pixel variation in a color, you can set the Eyedropper to sample a little block of pixels and average them. In the Eyedropper’s Sample Size setting in the Options bar, you can choose between the exact pixel you click (Point Sample), a 3-pixel square average, or a 5-pixel square average. Oddly enough, this Eyedropper setting also applies to the Magic Wand (The Magic Wand). Change it here and you change it for the wand, too.
The Color Swatches panel holds several preloaded groups of sample colors for you to choose from. Go to Window→Color Swatches to call it up. You can park it in the Panel bin just like any other panel or leave it floating on your desktop. When you’re ready to choose a color, just click the swatch you want in the panel, and it appears in the Tools panel’s Foreground color square or in the color box of the tool you’re using.
The Color Swatches panel is really handy when you want to keep certain colors at your fingertips. For instance, you can put your logo colors into it, and then you always have them available for any graphics or ads you create in Elements.
Elements starts you off with several different libraries (groups) of color swatches; click the pull-down menu in the Swatches panel to see them all. Any swatch you create appears at the bottom of the current library; you can save it there or create your own swatch libraries.
Using the Color Swatches to select your Foreground or Background color is as easy as using the Eyedropper tool. Figure 7-20 shows you how.
Figure 7-20. When you move your cursor over the Color Swatches panel, it changes to an eyedropper. Simply click to select a Foreground color, or Ctrl-click/⌘-click to pick a Background color. If you’re using a preloaded color library, you’ll see labels appear as you move over each square.
You can change the way the Color Swatches panel displays swatch information, as explained in Figure 7-21.
Figure 7-21. To see swatch information displayed like this, click the four-line square at the top right of the panel and select Small List. (When using some Elements tools, like the Type tools, you bring up these display options by clicking the Options button below the swatch samples instead.) Depending on the library you’re using, you’ll see the names or hex numbers of each color in addition to a small thumbnail of it.
You can save any colors you’ve picked using the Color Picker or Eyedropper tool as swatches. (If you don’t save them, you lose them as soon as you select a different library or close the panel.) To save a swatch, you can do one of two things:
Either way, you get a chance to name and save the new swatch. The name shows up as a pop-up label when you hover your cursor over that swatch in the panel. (When you save the swatch, Elements picks a spot to save it; don’t change that location if you want Elements to recognize what you’re saving as a swatch.) Your swatch appears at the bottom of the current swatch library. To delete a swatch that you’ve saved, Alt-click/Option-click it or drag it to the Trash icon in the Color Swatches panel.
You can create your own swatch libraries if you want to keep your swatches separate from the ones Elements gives you. To do that, click the four-line square at the Color Swatches panel’s upper right and pick Save Swatches. Then give the new library a name and save it.