How to Use the Color Swatch Palette in Photoshop

The color swatch palette is a great way to easily use and organize your colors in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Find out how you can view different types of color swatches, make a color swatch a foreground or background color, add a color swatch, delete a color swatch or load a new set of color swatches by following the steps below.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Photoshop CS3

Instructions

1. Start Adobe Photoshop CS3 and open an existing document from your files or create a new Photoshop document.

2. Choose the "Window" menu and click on "Swatches" to open the swatches palette on your desktop. The swatches palette consists of squares of colors that can be used in your document.

3. Change the type of color swatches that are in the color swatch palette by choosing the color swatch palette menu and clicking to select any of the color types near the bottom of the menu.

4. Click a color swatch in the color swatch palette to set that color as your foreground. Hold down the CTRL key as you click the color swatch to set it as your background color.

5. Add a custom color to the color swatch palette by clicking in a blank area of the color swatch palette. This will add the color that you have set as your foreground in the Photoshop toolbox as a color swatch.

6. Click and drag a color swatch to the picture of the trashcan at the bottom of the color swatch palette to delete that color swatch.

7. Choose the color swatch palette menu and select "Load Swatches" to open up the "Load" dialog box. From here, you can load a saved collection of color swatches into your color swatch palette.