Mastering the Color Picker

Quick reference

• 00:05 It may not be obvious to you yet, but the built in color picker tool in OS10,
• 00:09 which is also accessible within the Keynote application,
• 00:12 can be very powerful for creating presentations,
• 00:15 especially if you have a strict set of design guidelines to adhere to.
• 00:20 In this lesson, we will walk through the benefits of using the color picker.
• 00:23 By the end of this lesson you will be an expert.
• 00:26 So let's get started.
• 00:28 First, let's open our color picker tool.
• 00:30 There are two ways to do this.
• 00:32 First, we can highlight any object, for example,
• 00:35 a circle, and then click on the small color wheel
• 00:38 located next to the choose a color option on our formatting pane.
• 00:42 The second option is to press shift, command, c.
• 00:46 C for color.
• 00:47 This will open the same color picker tool.
• 00:50 As you can see,
• 00:51 we have five different tabs to choose from at the top of our color picker.
• 00:55 They are color wheel, color sliders, color palettes, image palettes, and pencils.
• 01:02 You will also notice a few tools at the bottom of our color picker window
• 01:05 that we will visit in just a few minutes.
• 01:08 The color picker tab gives us the option of choosing the color from the standard
• 01:12 color wheel.
• 01:13 As we adjust the color strength slider below the wheel,
• 01:17 you will see that the wheel itself will also adjust in strength.
• 01:20 If we slide the slider all the way to the right, the wheel turns black.
• 01:24 As you can see,
• 01:25 the selected object changes in real time as we are selecting a color to use.
• 01:30 This is great way to preview our color selection.
• 01:33 The color slider tab gives us great control over the colors that we use.
• 01:37 For example,
• 01:38 if we have a style guide that requires us to use a certain shade of blue,
• 01:42 we can use those values here to adjust our color precisely on our slide deck.
• 01:47 In this example, I was told by my marketing department
• 01:50 that this circle object had to be an exact shade of blue.
• 01:53 CMYK values of 60%, 30%, 4% and 1%.
• 01:56 If we change our drop down menu to CMYK, and enter these values here,
• 02:02 our object's color will adjust appropriately.
• 02:07 The color palettes tab gives us a subset of colors to choose from
• 02:11 when we are required to use a specific color palette.
• 02:14 For example, if we are asked to use only web safe colors,
• 02:18 we can select the web safe color palette and choose colors from there.
• 02:23 In some cases, a marketing department may have to find their own color palates to
• 02:27 use and deliver that palate file to us.
• 02:30 To open that color palette file,
• 02:32 we would click on the gear icon, choose open, then browse for that palette file.
• 02:38 The image palette tab is similar to the color wheel tab.
• 02:41 But uses a slightly different layout style.
• 02:44 There's also one other great advantage to using the image palette tab.
• 02:47 If we have an image that we want to use as the color basis for a Keynote slide deck,
• 02:52 we can load that image here, then easily chose colors from that image.
• 02:56 Here's an example.
• 02:58 I have a file on my desktop that I want to use because I like the colors it has.
• 03:02 If I click on the gear icon, then choose new from file,
• 03:07 I can browse for and select that file.
• 03:10 Notice what happens to my spectrum window.
• 03:12 Pretty slick right?
• 03:14 We can now choose from any color on this image,
• 03:16 by selecting various locations on the spectrum canvas.
• 03:20 Last but certainly not least, let's look at the pencil tab.
• 03:24 Of all the tabs,
• 03:25 this is probably the most simplistic in terms of how extensible it can be.
• 03:29 We are given a list of colors to choose from and that's it.
• 03:33 It's pretty straight forward.
• 03:35 I promised earlier that we would also cover the three options at the bottom of
• 03:38 this window, so let's do that.
• 03:40 The opacity slider will allow us to adjust the opacity of a color.
• 03:45 This is not to be confused with the opacity of an object.
• 03:49 An object can be 100% solid but the fill color can be set to, maybe 30%.
• 03:54 These are two different values.
• 03:57 The box in the lower left hand corner shows us the current color selection.
• 04:02 The eye dropper is a tool that allows us to select any visible color on the screen.
• 04:06 This can be within Keynote or it can be elsewhere.
• 04:09 For example, if I like the color used in an icon on the dock,
• 04:13 I can use the eye dropper to select and use that color.
• 04:17 The last feature I wanted to cover is this series of blocks at the bottom of our
• 04:20 color picker window.
• 04:22 By default, these boxes are empty, but we can fill them with colors as we see fit.
• 04:27 Think of these as our favorite colors.
• 04:30 If we like a specific shade of red for example,
• 04:32 we can drag that red over to our favorite section.
• 04:36 If we wanted to use that color red at a later time,
• 04:39 we can simply choose that block from the color picker at anytime.
• 04:42 These favorites, by the way, are system wide.
• 04:45 Meaning we can create a favorite color while using Keynote, and
• 04:48 use that same favorite color in Pages, Numbers, or
• 04:52 any other application that we can use on the Mac.
• 04:55 If you have more than 20 colors you want to favorite, no problem.
• 04:58 To add more, we simply drag here to extend the length of the window,
• 05:02 revealing more favorites blocks, up to 100 in total.
• 05:07 Okay. Now that you know all about the color
• 05:09 picker, maybe even more than you wanted to know, it's time for
• 05:12 you to explore this on your own.
• 05:14 Don't be afraid to try different things.
• 05:16 You certainly can't break anything.
• 05:18 So get started.

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