October 10, 1999

Picking any Color on a Mac

You know how to use the Eyedropper tool to get colors from a placed Bitmap image. But what about grabbing that great looking color from the icon on your desktop? Well on the Mac, this is extremely easy to accomplish, and you don't even have to leave FreeHand.

Version: 7 and above (Mac)

 
 


Every once in awhile, I'll be working on something and see a color that I would love to grab from something sitting on my Desktop or even in another application window.

Like for example, I want to get that skin color from the "MacDaddy" icon at the top. But how would I grab it? With Mac OS 7.5 and up, this is no problem.

 

First I show my color Mixer palette. Then keeping the object of my desire unobstructed from view, I click on the little Apple icon on the mixer.

 

When the Apple Color picker comes up, all you have to do is hold the Option key down and your pointer turns into an Eyedropper. With this eyedropper, you can click on anything on the desktop or in other application's windows (like a web browser for example). Shown above, I was able to extract that skin color with no problems.

This could be very useful in quickly getting a color from a web page or other strange things that would otherwise take some time figuring out.

 

After you get the color you're after, hit OK and the new color will be available for you to work with in the Color Mixer.

Of course working with these grabbed colors from the Desktop or other sources are better looking in RGB, because that's their source. Once you convert them to CMYK, they may shift quite a bit.

This tip isn't just for FreeHand either. Many applications use Apple's Color Picker, and in some you have to make sure that it's turned on for it to show up (like PhotoShop).

Just remember that it's best to put the object you want to grab the color from on the very top, bottom or side of the monitor, because in most applications you won't be able to move around the Apple Color Picker once in view.

If there is a Windows equivalent to this tip, I'd love to hear about it. For now, you can't grab custom colors out of the custom color dialog in Windows.