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Adobe Photoshop CC - Essentials Training

Stealing Colors & Adobe Color Themes

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, in this video we're going to pick some colors for our shapes. I'm going to show you a cool place like this to get some ideas for colors. I'm also going to show you how to steal colors from an image. Let's get into it now and get started. 

Welcome back, and first up, if you-- you can work on the file that you've worked on in the last tutorial. If you are just jumping into this particular one, if you go to 'File', 'Open', in the file called 'Exercise Files', 'Shapes', there's this one called 'Coloring Shapes'. Open that one up, that's where we're at now. So we just randomly picked colors and they don't quite suit the background as much as I want. So I'm going to show you kind of two awesome things to do with color. This should probably have been in the color section but it's hard to separate them all out into sections too much. 

So we are going to look at just how to get nice colors. I get stuck in, like-- I'm using, like that Gradient there I've used probably on every second job in the last six months just because I like those colors, and it's hard to break out of your color schemes. Look at any of my designs, it's either this green, that kind of-- I want to say, I don't know, any peach color and kind of a baby blue. All my work is done like that. So the way I get out of that comfort zone and find other colors, the nicest way is under 'Window', and it's under 'Extensions'; I don't know why they hide it. Such a cool little thing, so 'Window', 'Extensions', 'Adobe Color Themes'. You need to be connected to the internet for this to work, and this panel opens up. 

Now the initial one's a bit boring, it's this Explore one that's quite exciting. Well, exciting for me. Can you see here? It's nothing but just a bunch of cool colors. Scrolling down, scrolling down, there's some really cool stuff in here. You can do searches in here, if I need something from the 80s. Hit 'Return'. It will do a search, and that's some pretty successful 80s colors. Typing Cafe Bank. Actually popular brand, like I'm from Auckland in New Zealand, right? Weirdly if you type in Auckland, there's Universities, there's Council colors. You can find all sorts in there. I can find obscure things from Auckland Council. You can probably find, maybe your brand, and your corporate colors in there I'm going to get rid of it, and I'm just going to hit 'Search', actually I'm going to go to 'Create'. Then back to 'Explore'. Just some cool colors, right? 

You can say, 'Most popular this month', or 'All Time'. I'm going to go to 'All Time', and yes, some cool colors. To use them, the best way to use them is, say you decide on this color here. Click on this little dotted line, and say 'Add to Swatches'. Ignore this libraries thing, we'll look at him later on. Close that down as well. And now what we can do is we can click on my 'Ellipse'. If you're using an earlier version of Photoshop often you still need to go back to any of these Path tools and you can use the Fill up here. I'm using a newer version of Photoshop, so 'Ellipse', we can change it here as well. Click on it. You'll see down the bottom here, those are the five Color Swatches that we've added. So I can go you, you, you… 

It's just the way of, I guess, picking colors that are nice. Same with this Ellipse color here, I'm going to turn the opacity back up and I'm just going to pick one of the colors. It's still not quite working with my colors in the background here, but what you'll find is, it's just that-- just a neat way of-- first thing on, getting color options. Say you're doing some logos, or some designs, or web work and you just need to have like three color options for the client. Go to Adobe Color Themes, and just find some new stuff. I'm waffling. 

Next thing I want to show you though is how to really kind of steal colors from an image. That can quite often be a nice way to kind of differently match the colors, because, yes, just because. So I'm going to have this front Ellipse selected. I'm going to click on this and nothing really needs to happen, you need to click on this 'Hue Slider'. We're not really going to use this, just move them out of the way. Then, see the little Eyedropper, we start working through this. The trouble is it doesn't update this automatically. It's picking the color, which is cool but it's not going through, and like--

Let's click 'OK', now it will work. So I've picked the pink from it, I'm going to grab the green. Same thing, click on the 'Color Swatch', grab the 'Hue Slider'. Just move out here, and I'm going to pick one the yellows, or in this case, kind of an orange. Now, are the colors working for me? I'm not that happy with them, so what I tend to do is, say this color here, I can use my same trick, pick a different color, say I pick something from here. Something a bit warmer. What I want to do is, maybe just drag this circle down a bit to get maybe something that is close to it, but maybe darker. Dark as being used in there, so just-- you might find that works, good for you. 

I'm going to click on this one, do the same thing, I like that color. I just want it to be like a darker version of it, you just drag us straight down. And yes, I've made it ugly. What I'm probably going to do is, I'm going to-- play around now, you can leave, we've learned how to do little tricks. Remember, 'Window', 'Extensions', "Adobe Color Themes', pretty cool. And you can use the 'Eyedropper Tool', you just need to have it selected and start stealing colors, by clicking on this, clicking on this. And you can just pick colors from there, using that. Great explanation, Dan. Let’s hit 'Cancel'. 

I'm now just going to mess about picking colors that I like. You can hang around if you like. What I want to do is, I want-- I don't like this kind of mud brown color, too brown. With it selected I'm going to go to this, go to this. You don't have to click from just here, I'm going to click on this one. So now the circles are the same colors. I want this top one to be like this green, I like that green. I randomly picked it but I think it kind of complements this all very nicely. 'Eyedropper Tool'. I'm happy enough with it. 

One thing though, if you were dealing with corporate colors you can click on this, and just type them in here. So hopefully you've got, like a corporate spec manual somewhere. Ask the Marketing department. If you are the Marketing department, and you have no idea what the color is, import the logo, and just use the same thing. Use the Eyedropper to steal the color from the logo. It's not exact but it could work. Or type in the RGB colors, or the CMYK colors, if you can't find them. I'm going to hit 'Cancel'. I am done, that is the end of the video. Let's get into the next one. Bye now.