10 Comments

Quick and Easy Color Picker

shot2.gif Neat little find for graphic designers out there. Instant Eyedropper helps identify any color that is displayed on your screen. Just left click and hold the system tray application and drag the little window over the pixel that you want pick up coloring information on.

To make things even easier Instant Eyedropper automatically takes the HTML color or RGB color and puts it into your clipboard so you can copy and paste into your application of choice. Windows Only, Free.

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  • Noraa Haras

    Mac OS X comes with DigitalColor Meter, an app that does essentially the same thing. Look in /Applications/Utilities

    Mac OS X only, you already have it.

  • Enzer Miliard

    thanks Dan…….. sadly I needed this a week ago…….. but I don’t know if I might need it again……

  • seth

    another awesome one is critical matter’s colorpicker pro (it’s not free, but its well worth the moola): http://www.criticalmatter.com/colorpickerpro/index.html

    sorry, osx only on that one.

  • chad

    firefox extension has been doing this for like 3 or 4 years, it’s part of my “ok I have firefox now I need my tools” actions after install

    …. and it’s free…. and it works on every platform… booyah

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/271

  • seth

    chad, yeah the firefox one is neat for when you must have firefox open too; i guess i’ve just gotten used to having a standalone version of a full featured color picker.

    for windows, i use nattyware’s pixie.

  • chad

    @seth

    Yea, well I’m a web developer with design tendencies so firefox is always open when I need some color picking, but I see what you mean.

  • http://uneasysilence.com Evan

    There’s a Windows program called colour pixie or something I used to use doing this.

  • Ian

    Thanks for the info

    The comments you get on your site are so unhelpful , I wonder why you or they bother to carry on.

    Anyway, keep on keeping on…

  • http://www.donthedev.com/ Don Wilson

    Perfect. I always have to print script + open photoshop and that whole insane list of actions to get a simple color that I want.

    Thanks so much!

  • ColourPixker

    Nattyware’s Pixie is the best color picker for Windows – I wish it had an OS X version but the developer has already commented (can’t remember where?) that it will not be ported to OS X. If you are using Windows, go get Pixie.

    Pixie has a tiny footprint and quick and easy key board shortcuts:
    – copy the currently hovered color to your clipboard
    – zoom in on the hovered area (for easy copying of color)

    Color Picker Pro for Mac OS X looks about as good.

    Color Picker Pro Cons:
    – Costs $17.95 more than Pixie
    – The UI is too large side taking up precious screen realestate
    – remove zoom and make it a shortcut – see Pixie!
    – remove the permanent palette and make a shortcut – see Pixie!
    – Clumsy Copt yo Clipboard process
    – Color Picker Pro requires two different key strokes to get a color to your OS X clipboard. First you must press a “Capture” shortcut, then you must press a “Copy” shortcut to ‘Copy’ what you just ‘Captured.” Why? If Color Picker had a shortcut to copy the hovered color (like Pixie) instantly, it would be worth the price.

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