Eyedropper tool

- There are some tools that are not used to directly apply color to the canvas, but which support the application of color tremendously. And one of these tools is the Eyedropper tool. So, if I have a couple of different colors on the canvas, and, let me just paint a few swatches here, I can use the Eyedropper tool, which we find here in the tool palette, to pick a color from the canvas.

And when we click with the Eyedropper tool on the canvas, the color that we find there is automatically loaded into our foreground color selection. If I hold for a moment my mouse button, you can see that the color that is going to be picked is shown in the circle in the upper part, and the color that is still active is shown in the lower part, so that you can compare the two colors. And if I picked my color from the canvas, I can go back to my Brush tool and use it to apply paint.

And it would be a little bit cumbersome if I had to change between the Eyedropper and the Brush tool all the time, and that's the reason why there's a very handy shortcut for the Eyedropper tool, and it is the "alt" key. If you are using one of the paint application tools, namely the Brush, the Gradient tool, or the Paint Bucket tool, you can press and hold the "alt" key. And this changes your cursor to the Eyedropper.

You can pick your color, release the "alt" key, and you return directly to your paint application tool, in this case, the Brush tool. And that way, you can very quickly pick a color and paint with it, or use it with any other paint application tool. The "alt" key is one of the most important shortcuts for digital painting. It's sitting right next to the space bar, which is also very important.

We remember it activates the hand tool. And it's a very common technique to have the left hand rested on the "alt" key to be able to pick a color at anytime, and you can also quickly switch to the space bar to move your canvas around. So, if you see people painting in Photoshop, you will note that they very often have the left hand on the keyboard, the thumb resting on the "alt" key to pick the color, and, occasionally, switching over to the space bar to move the canvas around.