Using the Colour Palette

Next we are going to learn how to change our colours.

There are 2 main ways of doing it.  

Left click sets the foreground colour
Right click sets the background colour

Let's change both our colours to something new.

If you know roughly what colour you want, but it doesn't have to be an exact colour, you can single left or right click on the part of the toolbar that shows you how many colours you have available.  

With your floodfill tool still selected, take your cursor over to this part of the palette and hover over it.  You'll notice that your cursor shape has changed to look like a dropper.  

Hover over a colour that you like and single left click.  You'll notice that the 2 parts of the Colour Palette I was talking about earlier have changed to show this new colour:

Now do the same thing, but right click:

This is the first and quickest way that you can change your colours... but it's not very accurate.  The best (IMHO) and most accurate way to change your colours is using this next method.

Go back to the part of your toolbar directly underneath where it says "Styles" and single left click on the first colour.  You'll get a pop-up box like this:

The colours and numbers will be different for you and you may or may not have any custom colours, but this is the same box as you will have on your screen now.

Now that you are here, there are several ways you can change your colour.  

The first way is to choose one of the "Basic Colours".  Let's do that now.

Take your cursor up to the colour you would like and single left click.  I'm going to choose bright green.

You'll notice that on the right hand side, you now have your colour in the top box and that the numbers have changed.  Click OK and you will notice that the colour you have just chosen is now in the top box in the Colour Palette.  

This is the first way of changing your colours using this method, but there are lots more ways, so lets bring up the box again by single left clicking on your colour

The next easiest way is if you have any custom colours selected.  Just single left click on the one you want and hit "OK".

The next method uses that big circle with the square in the middle of it:

All the 16 million colours you can use are in that circle somewhere... but how do you go about finding the one you want???

Take your cursor over to the circle and single left click in the circle as close to the colour you want as you can get.  I want a pinky purply kind of colour so I'm going to click in the pinky purply colour in the top right hand corner of the circle.

That colour is too bright for me... I want to dull it down a bit... make it a bit lighter and take the brightness down a bit.  

On the right hand side of the square, about half way down (on mine - yours may be in a different place) there's a little circle.  This shows you where the colour is that you've chosen.  Click and hold on that circle and move it about - notice how the colour in that top box keeps changing as you move the circle around?

    

Move your cursor around until you're happy with the colour and then hit "OK"

There's 3 more ways to change your colours using this box, but the ways you've just learnt are the quickest, easiest and most used methods.

When you're ready, go to the next page where we'll be learning about the other 3 ways.