Basics4Mac - Using the Color Picker

Easier color choices

Two views of the Color Picker
Click to see a larger image

Most Mac OS X apps that let you choose colors (Mail, Text Edit, Pages, etc) use the built in Color Picker. The default view of the Color Picker is a color wheel which I find kind of hard to use. The Color Picker has multiple views and one of them makes picking a color easy for color-challenged people like me.

The right-most view on the Color Picker is a crayon box. It looks just like that 48 color box of crayons from grade school. All you have to do is click on a crayon to choose that color. And, just for fun, the crayons have fun names like "Honeydew" and "Bubble Gum."

It is rare that I need a color specific enough that I need to use the color wheel or any of the other views of the Color Picker. Most of the time I am happy with one of the 48 colors in the crayon box.

For such a small palette, the Color Picker has a huge number of options. For a much more thorough look at the Color Picker, check out this article from Robinwood.com .

(If it has been a few years since you've played with real crayons, check out all the different kinds they have now).

Using the Color Picker - The Crayon Box | 3 comments |

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Using the Color Picker - The Crayon Box

Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 20 2011

I, too, rarely need the more “exotic” colors. However, I AM curious about the expandable grid of graph-paper that appears BELOW the colors in all the views. Can you please explain what that is used for?

Reply to This

Authored by: chrisb on Monday, June 20 2011

check out tomorrow's tip and see....

Will do. Many thanks!