Foreground/background Color Controls

Many of the painting and drawing operations Photoshop provides depend on the current settings of the foreground and background colors. Near the bottom of the toolbox you will find a region used to control these colors.

Clicking on either the large black or white square in this region will cause the Macintosh to display a color selection dialog box from which you can pick a new foreground color (if you clicked in the black square) or a new background color (if you clicked in the white square). The colors of these squares will change to reflect the current foreground and background.

To see how this works:

• Click once on the large black square used to select the foreground color.

• Try clicking at some location within the large square region on the left side of the dialog box that appears. This region should show a range of colors varying from black to red. After you click, the color of the point at which you clicked will be displayed in a rectangle up near the "OK" button on the right side of the dialog box.

• Click in a few more places in the large square to see how the dialog box displays each color you choose.

• There is a vertical rectangle showing a rainbow of colors running from the top to the bottom of the dialog box. At the bottom of this rectangle there are little triangles displayed on either side. If you position the mouse in one of these triangles, depress the mouse button and then slide the mouse up while keeping the mouse depressed you can vary the colors displayed in the large square.

• After playing with these controls to select an interesting color, click "OK".

• Notice that the rectangle in the toolbar that shows the foreground color now displays your choice rather than black.

To see the effect of changing the foreground color, you have to do a little drawing. In later parts of this tutorial we will crop the butterfly picture to eliminate all but the area around the butterfly. Since the lower left corner of the picture will be discarded later, it is safe to do some scribbling on it now.

• Point the mouse at the paintbrush icon in the toolbar (it is in the right column on the third row).

• Click the mouse once to select the paintbrush.

• Position the mouse in the lower left corner of the butterfly picture.

• Depress the mouse button and drag the mouse around a bit to practice painting. Don't get too close to the butterfly. Notice the color of the "paint".

Clicking on the curved double-ended arrow exchanges the foreground color and the background color. Clicking on the miniature replica of the black and white squares switches to the default foreground and background (black and white). You should click on these small squares now to restore the default black foreground color.