Photoshop eyedropper tool

The eyedropper is one of the simplest tools in Photoshop, but no less used for selecting a color to use as a foreground.

The eyedropper is one of the most used tools in Photoshop, therefore, in our opinion, it is one of the . Although it is not useful to do anything with the images directly, during our work with the program we will use it repeatedly, so we must know it.

In addition, it is one of the most intuitive and simple tools that we can find in the use of Photoshop, so perhaps these explanations are a little too much. However, to complete the one we are publishing on .com, we must not fail to explain the dropper and its different options.

As with many of the Photoshop tools, the eyedropper is grouped with other related utilities, under the same Photoshop button panel item, as can be seen in the following image:

The eyedropper is used to select a color and place it as the foreground color. The color is selected, once we have the tool active, by clicking on any part of an image, which can be the image with which we are working or any other that we have open.

Note: The foreground color is the color we have selected to work with when we paint with an image. That is, when painting with the brush or another drawing tool, the foreground color that we have active will be used. The foreground color appears in the Photoshop toolbar, where two squares filled with color appear. The front color is that of the square at the top, marked with a 1) in the following image.

So to change the foreground color you can select the eyedropper tool and then click anywhere on any image, where the color of the clicked pixel will be analyzed and placed as the foreground color. Likewise, the foreground color can also be changed by clicking on the foreground color box itself in the Photoshop toolbar. In this case, a dialog window will appear to select the color and the eyedropper tool will also be activated, so that we can select it by also clicking on any image to select the color of that pixel.

Dropper Options

The only option on the eyedropper tool is basically the sample area of ​​that color. By default, clicking on the eyedropper tool selects the color of the exact pixel where we clicked. But we can sample a larger area, to get the average color that was in a radius of pixels.

As you can see in the image above, the sampling radius of the color selected with the eyedropper can be measured in several pixels. The first option “From 1 point” allows you to select the color that is in a specific pixel of the image. The second option “3×3 Average” selects the average color that is in a 3×3 pixel area, centered where the eyedropper was clicked. Finally the “5×5 Average” option allows you to select the average color, the same as 3×3, but with a larger pixel radius.

Conclusion on the eyedropper tool

The dropper really has nothing more. Its use is very simple, so you will not need any further explanations. With your own experience you will be able to see that it is a widely used tool within Photoshop.

To finish, we suggest doing an interesting test. It is about selecting the brush or pencil tool, with which you can draw on the image with mouse movement. With one of these two tools selected, press the ALT key (Alternative) and you will see that the mouse pointer changes to the eyedropper. This is an interesting shortcut within Photoshop, for when you are painting on the image with the brush or pencil, since it is not necessary to change the tool to select a new color, but to momentarily press ALT to sample one with the eyedropper and continue painting with that new color