Colour picker issue

Hi there,
Having an issue I've never experienced with Photoshop CS4 (running on Windows 7). I can't seem to find a solution online, so hopefully someone here will have some suggestions.
Basically, when I pull up my colour picker, I no longer have a smooth gradient of colour; instead I'm getting bands radiating from the upper left corner. 'Only Web Colours' is not checked off, but my colour picker looks sort of like it would if it had been checked off (only the banding is less definite - it's maybe halfway between the way it normally looks and the way it usually looks with Web Colours checked off). This is also causing my brushes to behave strangely; the colours are interacting in funny ways, producing really desaturated mixes sometimes, and other times almost appearing to have some kind of burn/multiply effect going on. All layers and brushes are set to normal, and image mode is RGB.
Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. The only thing that I've done recently that I can think of that might have caused this is a Windows update on a bunch of my drivers yesterday afternoon, which included updates for my graphics card and Wacom tablet.
Rob

Hi Noel,
Actually, as far as I'm aware, the problem just started yesterday, immediately after I ran Windows Update (which included updates for my graphics card and my Wacom tablet). I can't say that for sure, because the last few projects I've worked on were all black and white or greyscale, and I may not have noticed the colour banding (though I suspect I would have). Otherwise, though, I've used this set-up for a couple of years now without issue.
As far as the monitor profile, I think I just changed that yesterday to see if that would affect things, but have changed it back now to what it was (SRGB 1EC61966-2.1). The banding is, unfortunately, still present. Anyway, here's a screengrab. I use a plug-in so that I don't have constantly be going in and out of the colour-picker when I want to choose colours, and you can see (hopefully) that the banding is present in both the plug-in and Photoshop's default colour picker window.
Interestingly, and I assume this is related, the brushes are working in funny ways too. For instance, if I take a lighter colour (for instance #b3988d) at 24% opacity and scribble across the white page there is literally no effect. If I stroke again, I see some colour where the second stroke overlaps the first, but not where it hits the blank page.
Thanks again,
Rob

Similar Messages

Issues with colour picker after installing latest updates

I’ve just updated my Photoshop (CS6) but now whenever I use it I can’t bring up the colour picker panel. When I try, Nothing happens and everything is else is disabled- I can’t click on tools, or layers, or anything from the dropdown menus. I can’t even minimize or quit the program!
Has any one else experienced this? Or knows how to fix it? I can't use it like this.
I’ve restarted photoshop several times, restarted my computer and this still happens every time I click on the colour swatch to bring up the picker.
I’m running on Windows.
Any help would be great.

It sounds like the color picker is opening off screen.
Do you have or had dual monitors?
You should be able to hit the escape or enter button to cancel out of the color picker.
I would try resetting the photoshop cs6 preferences by holding down the Shift+Alt+Ctrl keys just after starting the launch
of photoshop cs6 and keep holding the keys down until you get a dialog asking if you want to delete the photoshop
settings file and then press Yes because yoy do.

How do I fix colour picker to work across different colour-managed monitors?

Hey everyone!
I'm assuming this problem I'm having stems from having colour-calibrated monitors, but let me know if I'm wrong!
To preface, this is the setup I have:
Windows 7
3 monitors as follows, all have individual colour profiles calibrated using the Spyder 3
Cintiq 12WX
Dell U2410
Dell 2409WFP
Photoshop CS6 - Proofed with Monitor RGB, and tested with colour-managed and non-colour-managed documents
I usually do most of my work on the Cintiq 12WX, but pull the photoshop window to my main monitor to do large previews and some corrections. I noticed that the colour picker wouldn't pick colours consistently depending on the monitor the Photoshop window is on.
Here are some video examples:
This is how the colour picker works on my Dell U2410: http://screencast.com/t/lVevxk5Ihk
This is how it works on my Cintiq 12WX: http://screencast.com/t/tdREx4Xyhw9
Main Question
I know the Cintiq's video capture makes the picture look more saturated than the Dell's, but it actually looks fine physically, which is okay. But notice how the Cintiq's colour picker doesn't pick a matching colour. It was actually happening the opposite way for a while (Dell was off, Cintiq was fine), but it magically swapped while I was trying to figure out what was going on. Anyone know what's going on, and how I might fix it?
Thanks for *any* help!
Semi-related Question regarding Colour Management
Colour management has always been the elephant-in-the-room for me when I first tried to calibrate my monitors with a Spyder colourimeter years ago. My monitors looked great, but Photoshop's colours became unpredictable and I decided to abandon the idea of calibrating my monitors for years until recently. I decided to give it another chance and follow some tutorials and articles in an attempt to keep my colours consistent across Photoshop and web browsers, at least. I've been proofing against monitor colour and exporting for web without an attached profile to keep pictures looking good on web browsers. However, pictures exported as such will look horrible when uploaded to Facebook. Uploading pictures with an attached colour profile makes it look good on Facebook. This has forced me to export 2 versions of a picture, one with an attached colour profile and one without, each time I want to share it across different platform. Is there no way to fix this issue?
Pictures viewed in Windows Photo Viewer are also off-colour, but I think that's because it's not colour managed... but that's a lesser concern.

I think I've figured out the colour management stuff in the secondary question, but the weird eyedropper issue is still happening. Could just be a quirk from working on things across multiple monitors, but I'm hoping someone might know if this is a bug/artifact.
Going to lay out what I inferred from my experiments regarding colour management in case other noobs like me run into the same frustrations as I did. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - the following are all based on observation.
General Explanation
A major source of my problems stem from my erroneous assumption that all browsers will use sRGB when rendering images. Apparently, most popular browsers today are colour-managed, and will use an image's embedded colour profile if it exists, and the monitor's colour profile if it doesn't. This was all well and good before I calibrated my monitors, because the profile attached to them by default were either sRGB or a monitor default that's close to it. While you can never guarantee consistency on other people's monitors, you can catch most cases by embedding a colour profile - even if it is sRGB. This forces colour-managed browsers to use sRGB to render your image, while non-colour-managed browsers will simply default to sRGB. sRGB seems to be the profile used by Windows Photo Viewer too, so images saved in other wider gamut colour spaces will look relatively drab when viewed in WPV versus a colour-managed browser.
Another key to figuring all this out was understanding how Profile Assignment and Conversion work, and the somewhat-related soft-proofing feature. Under Edit, you are given the option to either assign a colour profile to the image, or convert the image to another colour profile. Converting an image to a colour profile will replace the colour profile and perform colour compensations so that the image will look as physically close to the original as possible. Assigning a profile only replaces the colour profile but performs no compensations. The latter is simulated when soft-proofing (View > Proof Colors or ctrl/cmd-Y). I had followed bad advice and made the mistake of setting up my proofing to Monitor Color because this made images edited in Photoshop look identical when the same image is viewed in the browser, which was rendering my images with the Monitor's colour profile, which in turn stemmed from yet another bad advice I got against embedding profiles . This should formally answer Lundberg's bewilderment over my mention of soft-proofing against Monitor Colour.
Conclusion and Typical Workflow (aka TL;DR)
To begin, these are the settings I use:
Color Settings: I leave it default at North American General Purpose 2, but probably switch from sRGB to AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB so I can play in a wider gamut.
Proof Setup: I don't really care about this anymore because I do not soft-proof (ctrl/cmd-Y) in this new workflow.
Let's assume that I have a bunch of photographs I want to post online. RAWs usually come down in the AdobeRGB colour space - a nice, wide gamut that I'll keep while editing. Once I've made my edits, I save the source PSD to prep for export for web.
To export to web, I first Convert to the sRGB profile by going to Edit > Convert to Profile. I select sRGB as the destination space, and change the Intent to either Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric, depending on what looks best to me. This will convert the image to the sRGB colour space while trying to keep the colours as close to the original as possible, although some shift may occur to compensate for the narrower gamut. Next, go to Save for Web. The settings you'll use:
Embed Color Profile CHECKED
Convert to sRGB UNCHECKED (really doesn't matter since you're already in the sRGB colour space)
and Preview set to Internet Standard RGB (this is of no consequence - but it will give a preview of what the image will look like in the sRGB space)
That's it! While there might be a slight shift in colour when you converted from AdobeRGB to sRGB, everything from then on should stay consistent from Photoshop to the browser
Edit: Of course, if you'd like people to view your photos in glorious wide gamut in their colour-managed browsers, you can skip the conversion to sRGB and keep them in AdobeRGB. When Saving for Web, simply remember to Embed the Color Profile, DO NOT convert to sRGB, and set Preview to "Use Document Profile" to see what the image would look like when drawn with the embedded color profile

When I open my Colour Picker, the middle block (which normally shows the colour in a gradient of shades) is just a solid colour depending on which H, S, B, R, G, B I have selected. How do I revert it back to normal?

When I open my Colour Picker, the middle block (which normally shows the colour in a gradient of shades) is just a solid colour depending on which H, S, B, R, G, B I have selected. How do I revert it back to normal?

Becky,
It seems that the issue is caused by a corrupt folder called en_US or similar (depending on language) within the Adobe Illustrator 18 Settings folder, see post #7 by Jules in this thread,
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1595766
so the solution should be to move or rename that folder (or the whole Adobe Illustrator 18 Settings folder).
You can find the folder in Move the folder (follow the link with that name) with Illy closed.
As a temporary roundabout way, you can select the lower rectangle to the right of the rainbow and DoubleClick to apply that to change the top rectangle and the values: the lower colour is the right one.

Dvacore.dll error between CP5.5 and PS5.1 using colour picker

Hi all.
If I have CP 5.5 (or 5) open at the same time as PS5.1 (not sure about other versions) and I use the colour picker (eye dropper) in CP, all is fine until I move the mouse icon onto the live PS window when I get the following error.
Has anyone come across this at all previously?
It's damned annoying as it makes sense to have PS and CP open when creating e-learning containing images.
Is there a fix for it?
It happens on both work computers as well as trial versions installed on other machines. (extensive testing to prove this)
HELP!
Regards

You certainly DON'T need to know anything about programming DLLs in order to log a bug about getting an error message. Let the propeller-heads worry about that. Just log the bug and outline the steps required to produce it. If I was able to get it, then many other users would too.
However, although I DO recommend you file a bug, be aware that this issue might already be fixed in Cp6. If the bug is not a show-stopper, and there IS a workaround for it, and there are not droves of users complaining and logging the same bug, I suspect they would put it as a low priority. I've not seen too many updates for previous versions of Cp emerge from Adobe once a new version was up and running.

Which one is right? The colour picker or the info panel?

Try this one out at home kids:
Set your colour picker to Greyscale and dial 25% K into your foreground colour swatch.
Now, in a new, RGB document, fill that document with your foreground colour.
Now open the Info palette, set one of your readouts to "Greyscale" and enjoy seeing it read 31% K.
Uh.
WTF?
My RGB readout reads 192 across all channels, which is correct: 192 / 256 = 75% (additive) = 25% (subtractive)
This probably has something to do with colour management, but could someone A) explain to me what is happening, and B) tell me how to set it so I can get mathematically predictable results?

D Fosse wrote:
I'm not trying to argue...well, I am - but if you could explain precisely what you're after I'm sure it's doable.
Dag, did you go through the exact sequence he put up in the first post?
The issue is that we seem to be able to set the absolute numbers for RGB in the COLOR panel (made visible through the Window - Color) menu via choosing Grayscale and a %K value - in this case 25% sets color (192, 192, 192). It sets these values no matter what profile the document is using.
When that color is used on any old document, the profile is involved with reading back the number in the %K portion of the info panel.
No profile is involved with setting the number (because this operation doesn't involve a document), a profile IS involved with reading the number from a document. That difference is at the root of the issue Tom is sensing, I think.
My comment about Photoshop being developed on a Mac... Note that with a profile carrying gamma 1.8, Photoshop DOES make the numbers match., probably owing to a hard-coded gamma correction in the logic of the info panel. It might be more reasonable for it to just use the gamma derived from the profile, or just do a conversion to linear space first, but then that would change the way Photoshop works, and Adobe appears to have a policy of "keep it very consistent with past releases, so everything still works".
-Noel

Colour picker

on windows $.colorPicker() is not the same as the colour picker that appears for choosing colours when clicking either the fill or stroke colour (ie, looks like it belongs on windows 95).
is there no way to call the actual colour picker, or am i limited to choosing colours with RGB, which, when it's for print, is a bit of an issue. (Converting isn't an issue, but when I have an exact CMYK colour I need to use...)
Or... has someone already made a CYMK and RGB colour picker? It seems like a fairly trivial thing to do - few sliders et voila! (he said naïvely!)

Take a look at Marc Autret's implementation: http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2009/06/web-color-picker
It might give you ideas on how to adjust it for CMYK.

Colour Match Issues

hi guys
without wanting to upset the current findings here's my simple problem:
in Pages 08 I created brochures,leaflets and posters for people and never had this problem. I update to 09 and all of the colour matches I create using the colour picker or magnifying glass vary when they are printed. On screen and as PDF's they look great but when they hit a print press they look awfull.
The same thing has happened to websites I've just created in iWeb 09 borders and boxes all show up as other colours.
So whats happened to the software?

Tell us what step by step process you used to create the pdfs in v08 and how, if at all, you have changed that in 09 and possibly there might be something you can correct.
Color management has always been a dicey issue with Pages, so nothing new there.
Check what color values the documents contain. Quite likely there is some conversion from RGB to cmyk that is causing the issue.
Peter

The colour picker

Is there any way to get a usable colour picker into Fireworks?
I mean, I have no problem with the OSX colour picker in principle (Omnigraffle have implemented it very well); but in FW it's pretty much unusable.
The problem is two-fold.
a) iThe colour picker works from a different profile than FW (FW isn't colour managed, whereas OSX colour picker uses the monitors profile, even if it's the default one). I don't care if this is Adobes or Apples problem from a technical stand-point, but the fact of the matter is that FW has decided to use a colour picker that doesn't actually work with it rather than either developing its own or just using the Adobe one you get in other apps in the suite. This wouldn't actually be a big problem if the following point didn't exist:
b) Changes don't update in real time (I mean come on), so getting colour changes right is complete trial and error. Some people like games, but personally when I'm working I like to avoid them. The PS colour picker is a great tool; but it seems that FW has no interest in the use of colour outside of the 256 grid. Omnigraffle uses the OSX colour picker and updates changes in real time, so I can only accept this as lazy coding on an essential feature.
Now I'm not expecting someone at Adobe to read this and send me an update in the next couple of days that fixes this glaring issue; but I'm hoping that there's some kind of workaround that fixes either a) or b), perhaps even both! I'd even be willing to pay for a 3rd party tool to deal with this problem.
Thanks in advance,
n

It's certainly not a problem with myself - I work in an office environment so this isn't isolated
I think perhaps you misunderstand the problem.
The colour will update, just not in real-time. i.e. if I select a colour in the colour picker (not the FW colour pallette, but the actual colour picker), then the colour will only change on commit; I can't drag the cursor around within the colour picker to gauge the change - unlike in Omnigraffle which also uses the Apple colour picker and updates changes in real-time. Or like in PS which has a proper colour picker and updates changes in real time.
n

RGB colour picker - Captivate 8

Has anyone else had issues with the colour picker not producing the correct colour when you've typed the RGB values in?

It is a known bug, has been reported several times. Hope it will be fixed
soon.
On Sep 29, 2014 11:01 PM, "emerge learning" <[email protected]>

Is there a way to make the colour picker in the toolbar bigger?

Hi,
Is there a way to make the colour picker in the toolbar bigger?
I've been using Illustrator for some time now and find this part of the software to be annoying as I frequently mis-click this tiny area and the switching between foreground and background colour is easily mismanaged and you end up changing the colour of the one you didn't intend and then have to make two clicks to remedy that.
Do any other users find this to be a badly designed part of the software?
Also, while I'm here I suggest that when in the colour creation dialogue the 'preview' tick can somehow be switched to on as default.
I can understand that there are situations where it might be better not to see your colour change in the document in real time, but to have to click this (again very small) tick box again and again feels like bad design.
^ both the above are frequent tasks for many users
Interested to hear if there's any work arounds to fix this.

Thanks for the tip,
I do use x and shift x and also / to make a no stroke or no fill. But / is a long way across the keyboard. I guess I could reassign that function to a key that's nearer x.
I think the real annoying bit is not only the small size of the two overlapping squares, but the fact that they change size depending on which one is selected. So the button that is not selected is encroached by the one that is selected (and overlaps it). This to me seems counter to interface design - ie, make the switch button smaller. Worse still is the no fill / no stroke button; insanely tiny.
I would gladly redesign this corner of Illustrator for Adobe, and I'm sure quite a few other people would too!

PS CS6 - How do I get colour picker to show the colour difference between new & current in the colour preview box?

In previous versions, I would click the on the colour selection boxes (tool bar) and the colour difference would show in the Colour Picker box. The selected colour (new or current) would show. The target circle would physically move around. Now all the colour number change, but the colour target doesn't move. I used to colour correct items by checking how close using the colour picker and rapidly switching back & forth. Now I can't do that. Help!

In a nutshell, you have to simplify the frame layer and erase the interior.
Here are the steps:
Create your background.
Add a new layer:
Drag the frame you want to use onto the editing surface. The frame will come in on its own layer:
Simplify that frame layer:
Choose the Magic Wand Tool and give it these settings:
Click on the interior gray area of the frame with the Magic Wand to select it, and hit your Delete key:
Switch to the Eraser Tool and erase the stuff that's left in the middle:
Select the empty layer (Layer 1 in this example) and use File...Place to place your image on it. The layer name will change to the name of the image. Adjust the size and placement of the image. Your layers will now look like this:
With the frame layer selected, add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, making sure to "clip" it to the frame layer. Adjust the sliders to suit:
The final result:
Ken
P.S., Nothing says "Christmas" like laundry and red leopard fur!

Can't see LabVIEW Colour Picker (Evaluation 2014 for Mac)

Hi all,
I am new to LabVIEW, and am trying to make a chart I made appear transparent. According to http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Using-LabView-s-Color-Picker/m-p/575619/highlight/true#M269839, the colour picker is available as one of the numeric controls, however I can't see it in there, nor by shift and right mouse click, nor within the tools menu. I have attached a screenshot of what I see. Is anyone able to help me please?
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
Screen Shot 2015-02-07 at 7 Feb 2015 15.48.01.png ‏375 KB

"Context-clicking" is the generic, non-platform-specific term used to describe how to get a contextual menu to pop up on a node. On Windows this is commonly called right-clicking. On the Mac it can be accomplished by control-click. I am not sure what Linux uses.
After you have run the VI the color box control is no longer visible. From the block diagram context-click on the terminal. In the menu which pops up choose "Show Control" which will be about 1/3 down the menu. This will bring the front panel forward with the color box control positon (probably behind the chart) shown by dashed lines. If you cannot move it by clicking on it with the arrow cursor, then use the keyboard arrow keys to slide it out from behind the chart. Once is is exposed on the front panel, context click on the control and choose "Allow Transparent" from the pop-up menu (near the bottom of the list). Then the next time you run the VI the "T" box in the upper right corner of the color picker box should be available.
The Pop-Up_Color_Dialog.vi was written to be a simple demonstration of how to get access to the color picker. If you want to make is usable as a subVI, you need to associate the indicators or controls on the front panel with terminals on the connector pane. You do that by clicking on the conpane with the wiring tool cursor and then clicking on the control/indicator you want connected to that terminal. You will also need to find a way to stop that subVI. As long-time Forum particpant Ed Pickens has said, "Using the Abort button to stop a running VI is like using a tree to stop a car. It works but may have undesired consequences." I am not sure how you want to use that subVI (or whether you even really want a subVI), so I cannot tell you what changes to make.
That subVI has a chart but it appears that you probably want a graph. You might be better learning how the subVI works and applying the process to the graphs you already have.
Lynn

Colour Profile issues between North America and Europe

I have a corporate colour, C80M80Y0K0 which creates a very attractive shade of purple. Within North America all printouts demonstrate very similar variations of that purple colour. We have an office in UK that uses the same collateral pieces. While they preview correctly on screen, they are unable to reproduce that purple in their office or with their professional suppliers (all digital processes). The resultant colour is blue (approx C92M68Y18K0).
The files are created in Indesign, using a process colour within Indesign, and then exported to a PDF and shared with the UK office.
My guess is that it is a colour profile issue - has anyone else had this same issue, and if it is indeed a colour profile issue, what profile would you recommend using? I've tried using some of the other default profiles within Indesign but with no luck.
Any assistance would be really appreciated.

The resultant colour is blue (approx C92M68Y18K0).
What preset are you using for the Export, or what are the Output settings? Have you tried PDF/X?
PDF/X-4 will leave color unchanged and profile everything, so a color change like you are describing most likely means the wrong output profile is being used in the UK.
PDF/X-1a forces everything into your doc's CMYK space and makes conversions at output less likely—with X-1a your 80|80|0|0 mix will probably be output unchanged.

Printing colour recognition issue with illustrator created design.

I have a macbook pro with retina display and illustrator Cs 6.
For some reason, when I tried to print my illustrator designed work at the professional printing service.
it said there are colour recognition issue. I wasn't sure if that is anything to do with the Illustrator Cs6 or to do with the retina display or the printing service.
I would like to know if anyone have the same issue, and how do you resolve it.
Thanks.

Ahhh,
The colour mode is websafe HEX is the design work by the looks of it and the print is using CMYK mode. Try changing the document's colour mode to CMYK from RGB and see if the blue looks darker. It should do.
Take a look at the image I've attached. I've created both RGB and CMYK variations of the hex colour #0099BA.
I think it's just down to a difference in colour mode between digital version and print. There are some really great comparison sites available that will give you a close conversion if your matching spot and PANTONE® colours too.
Let me know if your any closer to a resolution please. Interested to see what the issue is.

Colour picker issue

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