Doc:Reference/Color Picker

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[edit] Color Management with the Color Picker Applet

The term Color Management refers to using a consistent color theme, and specific set of colors, that complement each other and work well to convey the emotional intent of the graphic. There are a number of sites and tools that provide complementary color themes. Choose a theme, and save the pallette (a grid or srip of color swatches that make up the theme) and save it on your computer. In the example above, an ocean/organic theme of five colors, from green through yellow to a blue, are being used. The dark green is being used as a material diffuse color, while a lighter shade is used as the specular color.

To use a color theme, load the pallette image in the UV/Image Editor. Then, when you want to choose a color for a lamp, material, texture, world background, etc, simply:

1. On any Blender panel where a color is chosen, you will see a color swatch that reflects the current RGB settings. The example shows the material settings, where the diffuse Color is being set.
2. Click that swatch, and a color picker applet will pop-up as shown.
3. The applet shows you the currently selected color above the original color, one above the other. left of the RGB sliders.
4. Click the eyedropper Sample button, and your cursor will change to an eyedropper.
5. Move your cursor over the desired color in the UV/Image Editor window and click
6. The eyedropper will "suck up" that color and set the current color (top swatch in the color picker applet window) to the new color.
7. Click again to confirm the color

It also might be acceptable, within a color scheme, to change the saturation or value of a color hue. To do so, after picking the hue, to alter the saturation or value of a hue, click on the HSV button, and the RGB sliders will change to HSV sliders.

Changing the saturation balances the color against a neutral gray, as if more of the dye was allowed to saturate and permeate the material. The easy way I remember value is to think of the dilution of that ink in water; less value means that fewer drops of the ink are in the water, and the dye is therefore not as potent.

Dropper samples a Pixel, not an image area average:

the dropper (when used to sample a picture/image (e.g. in the UV/Image Editor window) or image-textured object may seem to return random colors. This is because the dropper samples a PIXEl, which in a photo image, you can have very different colors next to one another. Mousewheel up in your UV window to zoom in on your image and you will see that, for example, a red pixel next to a green pixel may look yellow at a lower resolution.

[edit] Setting a Custom Color Scheme

In the above image, you will notice a vertical strip consisting of 16 mini-swatches, of 8 colors in 2 columns. By default, the left column is shades of gray, and the right column are some basic colors. If you  LMB click on one of these, that color will become the current color. If you Ctrl LMB click on one of these, the color swatch will change to become the current color. Ctrl LMB click to save your color scheme this way.

These are session presets and remain active while Blender is running, even if you change files. If you re-start Blender, they reset back to original.