How To: Steal Colors from Websites with Photoshop CS3+
Sometimes when you visit a certain website, you’ll notice a certain combination of colors that you really like – and perhaps planning to use it on something you’re working on, or as an inspiration for future use.
The way I normally go about to get these colors is by taking a screen shot of the website and use the color picker in Photoshop (or other image editing software) to pick the colors up, and save the colors for later.
Recently, I’ve discovered a very handy trick to make this task a lot easier. (Note: I’m using Photoshop CS3, so I am not sure if this would work in previous versions of Photoshop).
Some tips to make this easier:
- Unmaximize your Photoshop window, unless if you have two monitors, on which you can have Photoshop and your web browser both maximized on each of the monitors.
- Have one blank document open (it can also be any open Photoshop/Image file, doesn’t really matter)
- Maximize your browser and open the website with the color that you wanted.
The steps
First, choose the Color Picker tool ( 
).
Next, click anywhere in the blank document (or any open images/Photoshop files) and drag your mouse out of the Photoshop window, right onto the color on the website that you wanted to pick.
Release your mouse button, and Voila! you have the color you wanted! The screen shot below might help you understand what I meant:
Hopefully this will help in finding the right color that you’ve always wanted!
Note: This trick also works with Adobe Photoshop CS4
WHAT THE!? WHA..
Mai Gawd, this is one wicked tip! Never thought of dragging the eyedropper outside the window ( well, of course I’m pretty sure most of us tried to “click” outside the window lol ). This tip is extremely useful! Thanks a lot, dude!
i think it is much more better if we save the screenshot or image or whatever before pick the colour you wish. So we still can use it in the future although there are no internet connection. just my 2 cents, nway nice trick. thanks for sharing.
I had the same reaction as edo. “What the!? Wha…”
Very good tip. I’ll have to pass it along for sure.
Yeah I do this too sometimes. Especially if I like the design, using them as inspiration.
But there are times where you might just wanna get that one color, so this could be handy!
Glad you like it. Do pass the knowledge along :)