Select a color or edit a gradient – Adobe After Effects CS3 User Manual
Page 241
AFTER EFFECTS CS3
User Guide
236
Select a color or edit a gradient
In many contexts, you can click an eyedropper button
to activate the eyedropper tool, or you can click a color
swatch to open a color picker. If you use the Adobe Color Picker, you can also activate the eyedropper from the
Adobe Color Picker dialog box.
If you click a gradient swatch for a shape layer’s stroke or fill, or click Edit Gradient in the Timeline panel, the Adobe
Color Picker opens as the Gradient Editor, with additional controls for editing gradients included at the top of the
dialog box.
Note: The
sampleImage
expression samples the color values in a way similar to that of the eyedropper. Use this method
to use color values of specific pixels as input into an expression. (See “Layer General attributes and methods” on
page 570.)
A. Opacity stop B. Color stop C. Opacity midpoint D. Eyedropper E. New-color rectangle F. Original-color rectangle
Choose a color picker
❖
Choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS), and do one
of the following:
•
To use the color picker provided by the operating system, select Use System Color Picker.
•
To use the Adobe Color Picker, deselect Use System Color Picker.
Select a color with the eyedropper tool
1
Click the eyedropper button, and move the pointer to the pixel that you want to sample. The color swatch next to
the eyedropper button dynamically changes to the color under the eyedropper.
2
Do one of the following:
•
To select the color of a single pixel, click the pixel.
•
To sample the color average of a 5-pixel-by-5-pixel area, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the area.
Press the Escape key to deselect the eyedropper.
C
A
B
D
E
F