Something I had been missing since I moved from the world of PCs and over to my Macbook Pro was a tool to pick colors.  I use it all the time when working with websites, designing graphics etc.  Mind you I am not good at either of those things, but sometimes I am forced to put myself into service.

Obiously the eye-dropper tool does this in Photoshop, but it does not work outside of Photoshop.  When I was in Windows I had a tool that did this same thing in the text editor I used for writing code.  The name of it escapes me now.  I am using TextWrangler on the Mac, which works great for me, but it does not have a color picker.

I finally got frustrated not having this available (in this case I was actually trying to match up an adsense ad block to a background), that I did some more searching to see if I could find a simple tool to throw on my mac.  Instead I found out that there is a tool that comes with the mac called “DigitalColor Meter”.  It is in Applications >>> Utilities >>> DigitalColor Meter.  And it does exactly what you might think it does.  You run it and anywhere your mouse goes it will break down the color code.  Do you want it in Hex?  It will do it.  Want it in 16-bit hex?  Will do that too.  Pretty much any way you might need the color number it gives you quickly.  I was so excited to find this application that I have permentantly docked it.  I may not use it more than once a week but I don’t want to forget about it.

So thanks Apple.  It is some of these little things that really make me appreciate my purchase, even a year later.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Y Not?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.