How to Use the Color Sampler tool in Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop is a raster-based image editing software. It is developed by Adobe.Inc and available for both macOS and Windows operating systems. You can use Photoshop to create or edit images, posters, banners, logos, invitation cards, and various types of graphic designing work. It provides various tools for designing and editing and the color sampler tool is one of them.

Color Sampler tool

The color sampler tool is one of the different types of color selection tools available in Photoshop. The color sampler tool is used to measure or view the color values in the image. Or in other words, the color sampler tool creates persistent pixel value readouts of the color that are displayed in the Info panel, which helps to monitor the changes in the image after applying color-correction techniques and filters. To select the color sampler tool, Right-click on the Eyedropper tool on the tool palette -> a drop-down menu will appear -> select the color sampler tool from the menu. The symbol of the color sampler tool will be given below:

How to use the Color Sampler Tool? 

Let’s understand the basic usage of the color sampler tool:

Step 1: Open any image or diagram in the Photoshop window(Here we have opened an image) as shown below:

Step 2: Now select the color sampler tool from the tool palette in Photoshop.

Step 3: The cursor will change to the symbol of the color sampler tool.  

Step 4: Now click on any part of the image from where you want to select the color. The tool will drop a sample point on the given point as shown below:

In the above image, as soon as the sample point is dropped using the color sampler tool, the info panel comes up, as shown below:

This info bar displays the color combination of the points we have sampled and also about the current color combination and the coordinates where our pointer now is. The first row of the info tab displays the RGB(Red, Green, Blue) values and the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key(Black)) of the current point over which our tool pointer lies currently. The second row of the info tab displays the current coordinates of the values of X and Y coordinates of the current position of the pointer. The rest of the rows show the RGB/ other color values of the selected points. In the above image, we have just selected one point, so it shows it with #1.

So, the color sampler tool helps to sample the color values which can be used for various purposes, and also the color sampler tool can be used to choose the color value within a particular range using the info tab.

Note: 

• It is not just that the info tab only appears when we can open the info tab by clicking on the Properties icon located on the right.
• We can sample a maximum of 10 different points in a single document using the Color sampler tool.

Options of Color Sampler Tool

As we have learned how to use the color sampler tool. Now let’s understand the options of the color sampler tool. When we select the color sampler tool, a properties/options bar appears below the menu bar as shown below:

Sample Size 

The sample size has seven options. They are the same as those present in the properties/options of the Eyedropper tool. The sample size defines the area sample from where the eyedropper tool will pick the color.

• Point Sample: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the color from the pointed pixel (i.e where the cursor is )
• 3*3 average: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the color from the 3*3 square average  
• 5*5 average: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the average color from the nearby square of 5*5 pixels.
• 11*11 average: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the average color from the nearby square of 11*11 pixels
• 31*31 average: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the average color from the nearby square of 31*31 pixels
• 51*51 average: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the average color from the nearby square of 51*51 pixels
• 101*101 average: If this option is enabled, the tool will pick the average color from the nearby square of 101*101 pixels

Clear All 

Clear All is used to clear all the sampled points from the Photoshop document. And to delete any particular sample point. Follow the following steps:

Step 1: Right-click on the sample point that you want to select.

Step 2: A dialog box will appear with the delete option.

Step 3: Click on it to delete the sampled point.

Thus, color sampler tools help to find the color values of the sampled point of the document/image. Now, by default, the color combination is set to RGB, we change the sampled color mode to ‘CMYK’ and many more. This can be done with the same procedure as deleting the sample point by right-clicking on the sample point.