Locked lesson.
About this lesson
This lesson will walk you through how to use the Color Picker.
Quick reference
Topic
This lesson will walk you through how to use the Color Picker.
When to use
Working with colors can be very useful, especially if you have strict guidelines to follow. Using the Color Picker in the right way can help you to do this effectively.
Instructions
The built-in Color Picker tool is system-wide, not just specific to Keynote. Changes made to the Color Picker tool in Keynote will be evident in other apps on your system.
There are two ways to open the Color Picker:
- highlight any object then click on the color wheel on the formatting pane
- Shift+Command+C
There are 5 buttons located at the top of the Color Picker window:
- color wheel
- color sliders
- color palettes
- image palettes
- pencils
The color wheel tab allows us to choose a color from the standard color wheel.
The color slider tab gives us great control over the precision of our colors using CMYK and other values.
The color palettes tab gives us a subset of colors to choose from like web safe.
The image pallets tab allows us to use an image as the basis for colors to choose from.
The pencils tab gives us a simple list of predefined colors to choose from.
The opacity slider allows us to adjust the opacity of the color we use.
The eyedropper is a tool that allows us to select any visible color on the screen.
At the bottom of the Color Picker window, we can add custom colors so that we can use them over and over again, in any application (not just keynote). We can add up to 100 custom colors to use.
Login to download- 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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