Choosing colors by using the Color Picker

When you edit images in Corel PaintShop Pro, you often need to choose a color before painting, drawing, or filling, making manual color corrections, or choosing a background for a new raster image. The Color Picker is the most versatile tool for choosing colors.

The Color Picker appears when you click the Foreground/Stroke Properties box, the Background/Fill Properties box, or one of the two smaller Color boxes. It also appears when you click a Color box found in other dialog boxes.

The Color Picker

The appearance of the Color Picker depends on the color depth of the active image (16 bits/channel, 8 bits/channel, 256 colors, 16 colors, or 2 colors).

The Color Picker offers many ways to select colors:

•

The Color (hue) wheel and Saturation and Lightness box let you select and preview a color.

•

The Basic Colors panel displays commonly used colors.

•

RGB or HSL values let you choose a color based on its red, green, and blue values or its hue, saturation, and lightness values.

•

HTML color code lets you enter HTML color values.

•

The Color Picker lets you select a color from the active image.

By default, Corel PaintShop Pro displays decimal (base 10) numbers in the Color Picker. You can also display hexadecimal (base 16) numbers — the format of HTML color codes. For more information about display and caching options, see Setting Display and Caching preferences. For more information about color and how it is perceived, displayed, and printed, see Understanding color and color models.

To choose a color by using the Color Picker

Edit workspace

On the Materials palette, do one of the following:

•

To choose a foreground color, click the Foreground and Stroke Properties box or the Foreground Color box.

•

To choose a background color, click the Background and Fill Properties box or the Background Color box.

The Material Properties dialog box or the Color dialog box appears.

If the Materials Property dialog box appears, click the Color tab.

Click or drag the hue wheel to select the approximate color.

Click or drag inside the Saturation/Lightness box to set saturation and lightness for the color you have selected.

Move from left to right to adjust the saturation; move from top to bottom to adjust the lightness.


You can also
Choose a basic color by clicking a color swatch	Click a color swatch in the Basic Colors panel that appears under the color wheel.
Choose a color by specifying its Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) values	Type values in the R, G, and B boxes.
Choose a color by specifying its Hue, Saturation, and Lightness (HSL) values	Type values in the H, S, and L boxes.
Specify a color by using its HTML code	Type an HTML color code in the HTML box.
View each individual RGB or HSL color value separately or in combination with the other color values	Unmark the Link Colors check box to display the selected color in the drop-down slider for each RGB or HSL value (for example, the Red slider displays only degrees of red, from 0 to 255). Mark the Link Colors check box to display the current color in combination with the other two colors.

You can also choose a color directly on the Frames tab or the Rainbow tab of the Materials palette. The Frames tab contains a more compact, rectangular version of the color wheel and its controls. The Rainbow tab presents every available color. Click to choose the foreground color, or right-click to choose the background color.

You can access recently used colors by right-clicking the Color box on the Materials palette. In the Recent Colors dialog box, click Other to display the Material Properties dialog box.

To use the current colors with all tools, mark the All tools check box on the Materials palette. If you unmark this check box, the current materials are used by the active tool only.