The Eye Dropper

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The Eye Dropper

The Eye Dropper (or Dropper) isn't a painting tool in itself. What it does is enable you to "pick up" a color from an imageor anywhere on your screento set the Foreground or Background material for use with tools like the Paint Brush, Airbrush, and Flood Fill tool. To set the Foreground color, click with the left mouse button. To set the Background color, click with the right mouse button.

When you select the Eye Dropper, its Tool Options palette shows two controls: a drop-down list labeled Sample Size and a check box labeled Active layer only .

Sample Size can be 1 x 1 Pixel , 3 x 3 Pixels , 5 x 5 Pixels , 7 x 7 Pixels , or 11 x 11 Pixels . When you're sampling a uniform solid-colored area, all of these settings are equivalent and you'll get whatever image color is under the cursor. When you're sampling a nonuniformly colored area, Paint Shop Pro will calculate an average of the colors within whatever sampling range you've set. For example, if Sample Size is set to 3 x 3 Pixels and the 3x3 pixel area surrounding the pixel under the cursor contains more than one color, the color that is picked up will be an average of those colors.

With Active layer only unchecked, Paint Shop Pro samples any image color under the cursor, no matter what layer the color is on. When this check box is checked, Paint Shop Pro samples only colors that are on the currently active layer.

NOTE

TIP

When any tool is active, you can temporarily change it to the Dropper tool by holding down the Ctrl key. You can then click on a color to set the Foreground color or right-click to set the Background color. To go back to the normal functioning of the active tool, just release the Ctrl key.

With this method, the last used settings for Sample Size and Active layer only will be in effect.

NOTE

TIP

If you are using Windows 2000 or later, you can pick up a color that appears on your screen somewhere other than in an image canvas. With any tool selected, place the cursor over one of the material boxes in the Materials palette. Press the Ctrl key and, with the Ctrl key still held down, move the mouse to the area of color that you want to sample. Click when the cursor is over the color you want. If you started from the Foreground material box or Foreground solid-color box, the Foreground color is set. If you started from the Background material box or Background solid-color box, the Background color is set.

This technique also works with any material box appearing in a dialog box.

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