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Preview: Handy Color Picker [Leopard]
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As a huge fan of Leopard Preview, I always try to do my image editing process with Preview. And I guess today is my lucky day, I discovered how to pick color from anywhere of your Mac screen with only Preview in hex format.
You could see the benefits here: Preview is fast, rarely crash and most importantly: it's free.
Setting Up
Here is the step by step tutorial on how to set up the color picker:
- Open Preview without opening any images file. This way, only the menubar of Preview will be shown on your Mac
- While the menubar is showing Preview, hit keystrokes Shift Command C to reveal one of Preview tools: Show Colors
- Inside Colors Pane, choose Color Palettes which is the third pane from the list of tools
- There you will see the palette chooser. In order to display the hex format of the color, you need to choose palette named Web Safe Colors
- Now, you've done the setting
How to Use
Though the color picker setting is a bit complicated and troublesome, but when it comes to using it, it comes in really handy. Can you see the Magnifier icon next to that long, ugly color bar? Click on it, move it around to pick the color of pixel of the screen you want and here you go, the specified hex code of the picked color are shown plus the nearby colors.
I know you will love it. Mind leaving portion of your love in the comment box?
Categories:
Imaging,
Leopard,
Utilities
Tags:
ColorPicker,
Leopard,
Preview
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10 Comments
Mr Ja Ja
Nice! What's that other icon you have on the colour pane?
Wendy
It's called Mondrianum which is used to get popular color scheme from the web. And don't ask me why I installed it. :-)
Ivan Leo
I was doing exactly the same using an application "Color Picker Pro" but my trial license expire just a few days ago. This method is better and free! Thanks a lot :)
Nico
That's a bad tip. There are only 214 web-safe colors, so you'll only get the hex of a color that's close to the color you clicked. You loose much information this way. Better get http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/ , which is free and doesn't have this problem.
Nicole
I agree with Nico, very bad tip. You're not getting the hex for the color you chose, just one sorta kinda like it. Nico, thanks for posting that link, looks handy.
John
Also, you could use DigitalColor Meter, which ships with your os, and is in Applications>Utilities
James
love your work !
finferflu
Unfortunately, I cannot find this function in the Preview app on Snow Leopard...
James Chen
finferflu: you can still bring up the colors pane in Snow Leopard, here's how: Preview Color Tool in Snow Leopard
CynthiaRobertson
I wanted to find a upgrade for my Applemac iBook I did not success, What do you think I need to do??
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