Anyone know of a portable Color picker application that has the ability to:
- Create/save/load color palettes
- Pick an average color using a predetermined area/sampling of pixels (rather than picking the exact color of 1 pixel)
- Generate CSS for things like hyperlinks using a selected set of colors (this is not so important)
It must have all the typical features you'd expect from a color picker such as:
- View a magnified area of the area you are picking a color from
- Copy color codes such as HTML to the clipboard
- Recognize Web-Safe colors
I'm currently using 3 applications and I'd really love to just get it down to one (or maybe 1 plus PMeter). The applications are
- CPick - it has numbers 1 and 3 from above
- ColorCop - it has number 2 from above
- PMeter - which is really a ruler with a built-in color picker which is basic but often suffices for my needs.
It seems like every color picker I've tried has some combination of the above but not all of the above. Really, number 3 isn't so crucial but an app with 1 and 2 would be great! ColorCop is probably the closest I've found, since it's the only one I've ever found to do the sampling stuff. On the downside you can't save or load color schemes and I do find its interface to be a little cluttered. If the chosen color picker also had a built in ruler then I could ditch PMeter too!
I looked at PicPick but the color picker options are far too basic. I know GIMP has a color picker too but that's far too overkill just for grabbing a few colors and playing around with some color schemes.
Consolidating apps is good for you
Does anyone have any alternative suggestions?
howdy Darkbee, would you happen to be the old moderator from portablefreeware.com? anyways welcome
as for what you are looking for I think you could try something like the freeware program Artweaver (not I said freeware and not open-source), I don't know how portable it is but I maybe able to make a launcher for this so you can give it a shot or someone else can try making the launcher for it but it has some decent features and it's one of the free ones that kind of looks like photoshop too if you are used to that kind of interface
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
Slightly off-topic, but is there a color-picking or painting program which will allow me to select a range of colors and make a gradient brush?
Example: I found a LOST wallpaper the other day with the Dharma Initiative logo in the center, but it was surrounded by the slightly altered (different center) logos from the various facilities around the island. The background is white, but it fades to darker as you go out from the center. I would like to remove all of the surrounding logos and make the center one into a cell phone wallpaper, but when I use the color picker in MS Paint and try to cover up the outside logos, it's only correct at one point.
There are other ways to go about this, I know there's a way to grab all the black from the image and paste/layer it onto a white background, solve the problem like that, but I don't know how, and that's just one example. I do cell phone wallpapers and gradients are a huge speed bump for me. I know I really need to learn GIMP, but MS Paint and XnView have served me well enough. And I'm not selling them, either, it's just for my wife and I (me mostly, she doesn't like change, same wallpaper going on 5 months now, but I change mine weekly).
Do not be afraid! GIMP is the way forward.
GIMP is definitely the way to go for major image manipulation that you're describing. You can use the "magic wand" tool to select areas of similar color, then simply cut or paint over those areas. You can even increase/decrease the tolerance so that less/more colors are included in the selection. It's still not perfect and will probably require some zoomed-in fine touching-up but it's one of the fastest ways that I know.
GIMP also lets you create brushes and gradients, then combine that with layers/masks and your options are virtually limitless.
There is a learning curve but I think it's worth it. I don't even use half the features in GIMP, nor to I claim to understand them but it seems every bit as good as Photoshop for day-to-day use in my limited experience.
Funnily enough I was going to post earlier about apps that I had been converted to, having previously shied away from, GIMP being one of them.
@Zach. Yes, tis I, the very same! I still live! Got your message at my website too! I think I replied via email, maybe I only sent a private message. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take a look.
Now that we're all done hijacking my thread, can we get back on topic please? (just kidding) :lol: