Foreground and Background
Used for choosing
foreground and background colors
Found at #12 in the Toolbar diagram at left
In the illustration at the top of this page, the large black square is the foreground selection square. If you click on this, the Color Picker, shown below, will be activated, and you can choose a color there, or you can click anywhere in the image to pick up a color.
Clicking on the box behind the foreground square, shown with the default white color in the icon above, will activate the same color picker where you can choose a background color.
Please note that if you have the background color square selected in
the Color palette (showing double-lines
as shown below), colors sampled with the eyedropper
tool will become the new background colors (and Alt-clicking with
the eyedropper will change the foreground color). Click the foreground
color square in the Color palette to get the eyedropper to sample foreground
colors.
If you click the two small squares in the bottom, left hand corner of the icon above, #13 in the diagram at left, you will restore the background and foreground colors to their default black, and white.
If you wish to reverse the background and foreground colors, click the curvy, double headed arrow in the upper right corner of the icon (#28 in the diagram at left). In the example shown, this would cause black to become the background, and white to be the foreground. This can be especially useful when editing a mask.
The keyboard shortcut for reversing the background and foreground colors is the letter X. The shortcut key for returning the two colors to their default, black and white, is the letter D.
In the illustration below you see the color picker, which appears when you click on either the background, or foreground squares. The white rectangle just right of center is the color which was selected (showing in the toolbar) at the time the Color Picker was activated.
The blue rectangle immediately above it is the color which has just been clicked in the large color box to the left. The small triangle to the right of that blue rectangle indicates that this color is out of gamut for the settings currently chosen in the CMYK Setup dialog box. This means that this color would not be printable. The closest printable color is shown in the tiny cube directly below the alert triangle. To choose that nearest printable CMYK color, click on the triangle.
Below the little out-of-gamut triangle is an icon that looks like a little cube. This indicates that this color is not Web safe. Click on the blue square below it to choose the nearest Web safe color, which is shown there.
By dragging the small triangles next to the vertical color column at center, you can change the range of colors available in the large box at its left. Click anywhere in that box, or within the vertical color column itself, to select a color. The white circle visible in the large color square indicates where I clicked to choose the blue color currently selected. You can change your choice as many times as you like, before clicking OK to finalize your selection.
Check the Only Web Colors box at the bottom of the box if you want only Web-safe colors to be displayed in the big color box.
If you click the Custom button on the right side of the color picker
(above) you get the Custom Colors dialog, shown below. From the Book menu,
you can choose from a number of commercial color sets.
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