Color Picking from outside Anime Studio -- Mac OS X tip

[CartoonM!ke]

Hi, this is a offshoot of the 9.5 arrgh! thread in the main discussion area. Instead of cluttering up that series of posts, I thought it may be best to start a new topic here.

There's a way to sample colors from images of any kind that's not loaded up in AS/ASP. This is a method that doesn't require any mucking about in the library folder or buying a new app, 'cause it's an app that comes with the Max OS X -- it's called DigitalColor Meter. It samples, live, whatever your cursor/mouse is over. To set it up for AS -- Once it's opened, go to the view menu --> display values --> and choose hexadecimal (you'll have to do this each time it's opened, as it doesn't save its settings, but it's free!). Then go to the color menu and see that there's two ways colors can be copied. Text (command-shift-c) and Image (option-command-c).

If we want to just copy the hex value just press the command-shift-c when the cursor is over the part of the image that you want to sample. The DCM window shows what's going to be sampled in its window. No need to mouse click, just the keyboard command. Then go to AS, click on the color swatch in the styles palette to bring up AS color picker. In the text block labeled with an #, click in it to get focus on it and paste (command-v). And the hex value of the color that was sampled is pasted there.

To copy as an image is the same except for the keyboard command, it's option-command-c. And the contents of the clipboard can be pasted into a graphics app. The pasted image is a square, so it'll be fine for setting up a custom palette that can be used in AS.

Here's a blog post that has other means to sample colors, including a Mac OS stand-alone color palette:

http://blog.mirthlab.com/2010/03/26/usi ... alone-app/

One of the solutions mentioned in that blog, is Hex. It's an add on to the MacOS X color picker. All it does is present the hexadecimal value as text of the sampled color. You'll have to open an app that allows the display of the Mac OS color palette.

I haven't installed the Developer Color Picker, so if you have, share your experiences.

While all of these require app switching, the ones I've tested (DigitalColor meter and the Color Picker add-on Hex) will sample from opened images in other apps or images that are viewed using the Mac's QuickView (select an image and hit the spacebar). I use it for sampling colored character sheets I've done in SketchbookPro or Manga Studio and once it's done a few times, the process of sampling, copying the hex and pasting it to AS gets pretty smooth.

These are all free, one may be $3 (that's Hues, iirc) and help us mac users to have a bit more flexibility in sampling colors for use in Anime Studio.

[heyvern]

Dude! This is awesome! I didn't even know about that cool little gizmo! Yes, it's a shame this can't be an always on top "floating app" within the mac, but it still is very quick.

On a side note, whenever I pop open the style color input, the hex color value box is ALWAYS highlighted. I never have to click or select that box. I just open and paste and close. I am not positive but I think that "auto hightlighting" of the hex color value might be a new feature added sometime recently, v9? Not sure just guessing.

[slowtiger]

I just googled and there's indeed a widget for this:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboar ... urmod.html

[CartoonM!ke]

Slowtiger, that widget appears only in the Dashboard part of OS X. It doesn't do anything outside the dashboard (which is a Mac OS X thing that's like it's own space that doesn't interact with the OS proper) pertaining to sampling colors. It's not a color picker in the sense that it can pick/sample colors from photographs. I did my google on the string "Macintosh OS X color pickers" and I got the blog I mentioned in the results. A real useful widget is "Sphere" ( http://mudcu.be/sphere/ ) it's billed as a color theory visualizer. It can take a color and show the various harmony colors for it. Pretty neat for getting a nice color scheme going. Kinda like Kuler by Adobe.

Heyvern, if you install Alfred ( http://www.alfredapp.com -- the basic version is free) you can switch by pressing (in my case F15) a function key, and type in the first few letters of the app (Manga Studio: type in ms, Anime Studio Pro: type in ASP, Photoshop: type in pho, and so on) and it'll open the app. You can even do a google search by bringing up the alfred window and typing in "images:[your search string here]" and it'll launch the browser and go to google and do a search. Then you can sample the colors from the images you like. Alfred's one of the system add-ons that I couldn't see doing without.