How to Define Custom Colors Using Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 comes standard with a wide variety of colors to use in your projects. Since the software is not designed for professional use, it does not allow you to define professional CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) separation colors nor does it allow you to save CMYK files. For standard home use RGB (red, green, blue) colors, there are millions and many variations.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Instructions

1. Open Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and create a new blank file by going to "File" then "New" then "Blank File" and set up the parameters you want in the pop-up dialog box. You may not need to do anything in the file itself, but you need to have a file open to define colors just to check to see how they will look. You don't technically need a blank file open, however.

2. Go to "Window" then "Color Swatches." This will open the Color Swatches palette. This is to where you will save your new colors once you have created them. There are a number of swatch sets, including the Default, Photo Filters, Web-safe colors and Apple Macintosh and Windows colors. You can add a new swatch to any of these.

3. Click the "Foreground Color" box. There are two color boxes at the bottom of the side Toolbar. The Foreground Color is the one with the corner over the other one. You can switch them by clicking the double arrow next to them. When you click on the "Foreground Color" box, a new pop-up will appear titled "Select Foreground Color." This will have a large graduated color box to the left, a rainbow spectrum bar in the center and detailed number boxes to the right of that.

4. Click anywhere you like on the spectrum bar to get close to your color, whether it is red, green, purple, yellow or some other. When you do this, the box to the left will change to give you access to variations of that color. Click inside the big box to select a color. The top of the preview box to the right will change to show your color as you move around the big box. Alternatively, you can type in the specific numbers of the RGB colors to the right of the spectrum bar if you have a set color you need. Click "OK" when you have the color you want. The new color will appear in the "Foreground Color" box at the bottom of the side Toolbar.

5. Add the color you have defined to the "Color Swatches" palette. You can do this either by clicking the "Create new color swatch of foreground color" button at the bottom of the palette, or if you want to name the color for future reference, click in the "Color Swatches" palette in the gray area under the colors. A dialog box will appear that allows you to name the color. Then click the "More" arrow at the upper right of the "Color Swatches" palette and select "Save Swatches. You can save an entire array of custom colors this way.

References

• Adobe website: Modify Color dialog