Working with Tools in Paint Shop Pro 8 - Select a Color Already in Your Image (Page 14 of 16 ) In Select a Color to Work With, you learned how to pick up a color in an image and use it for the foreground or background color. This process involved first opening the Color dialog box, selecting a color, and clicking OK. When you're hard at work on an image, it's difficult to set aside what you're concentrating on just to scrounge through a bunch of dialog boxes. Luckily, Paint Shop Pro provides an easier way for you to pick up a color from an image while bypassing those dreaded dialog boxes: the Dropper tool. The Dropper tool doesn't have a lot of options, but it does allow you to select a sample size. You can select a sample size as small as one pixel, which means that the pixel you click is the color you get. On the upper end, you can set the sample area as large as 11 by 11 pixels. When you choose a wider sample area, PSP blends all the colors in that area to create the color that is absorbed by the dropper.
Key Term Sample size—The area from which a color is derived by computing the average color of the pixels in that area.
Select Dropper Tool Click the Dropper tool on the Tools toolbar. If you don't see the Dropper tool, click the arrow on the Color Replacer tool and select the Dropper tool from the list that appears. Select Sample Size Click the arrow on the Sample Size list and select a sample size. Set Layers to Sample Normally, the Dropper tool selects the color based on what you're seeing, which is a compilation of the data on all visible image layers. But if you want to select a color from the current layer only, enable the Active layer only check box.
Note - To select a layer and make it the current one, click its name in the Layer palette.
Click a Color As you move the Dropper tool around the image, you'll notice that the RGB values of the sampled color appear in a small pane. In addition, you'll see a value and a percentage; these represent the opacity of the layer(s) being sampled. Values of 255 and 100% indicate that the color is fully opaque. Click the image with the Dropper tool to select a color for the foreground color. Right-click the image to select a color for the background color. With a pen tablet, tap the color you want to select for the foreground color. For the background color, hover the pen over the sample area and touch the pen's menu button (whatever corresponds to the right mouse button).
Figure 3.25  This chapter is from Paint Shop Pro 8, by Jennifer Fulton, (Sams, 2004, ISBN: 0672323893). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today.
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