Choosing Colors - Adobe 13102498 - Photoshop CS3 - Mac User Manual

Displays a palette based on the different colors a black body radiator emits as it is heated—from black to
Black Body
red, orange, yellow, and white.
Displays a palette based on 256 levels of gray—from black to white.
Grayscale
Displays a palette based on the colors produced as white light passes through a prism—from violet, blue,
Spectrum
and green to yellow, orange, and red.
Displays the standard Mac OS 256-color system palette.
System (Mac OS)
Displays the standard Windows 256-color system palette.
System (Windows)
Save and load color tables
You use the Save and Load buttons in the Color Table dialog box to save your indexed color tables for use with other
Adobe Photoshop images. After you load a color table into an image, the colors in the image change to reflect the
color positions they reference in the new color table.
Note: You can also load saved color tables into the Swatches palette.

Choosing colors

About foreground and background colors
Photoshop uses the foreground color to paint, fill, and stroke selections and the background color to make gradient
fills and fill in the erased areas of an image. The foreground and background colors are also used by some special
effects filters.
You can designate a new foreground or background color using the Eyedropper tool, the Color palette, the Swatches
palette, or the Adobe Color Picker.
The default foreground color is black, and the default background color is white. (In an alpha channel, the default
foreground is white, and the background is black.)
Choose colors in the toolbox
The current foreground color appears in the upper color selection box in the toolbox; the current background color
appears in the lower box.
C
A D
B
Foreground and background color boxes in toolbox
A. Foreground color box B. Default Colors icon C. Switch Colors icon D. Background color box
• To change the foreground color, click the upper color selection box in the toolbox, and then choose a color in the
Adobe Color Picker.
• To change the background color, click the lower color selection box in the toolbox, and then choose a color in the
Adobe Color Picker.
• To reverse the foreground and background colors, click the Switch Colors icon in the toolbox.
• To restore the default foreground and background colors, click the Default Colors icon in the toolbox.
PHOTOSHOP CS3 118
User Guide