Table of Contents
Choose and manage colors in Pixelmator Pro
There are two ways you can choose colors in Pixelmator Pro — using the Pixelmator Pro color picker and the macOS Colors window. There's also a separate Color Picker tool you can use to manage colors and color palettes, change the color picker settings, and more.
The Pixelmator Pro color picker allows you to quickly choose colors for different tools, color adjustments, or effects, and it appears when you click any color well in Pixelmator Pro.
The tool consists of two main sections — the color picker at the top and the color swatches below it. The top section also features an eyedropper for picking colors from the image, the color square with a hue slider for choosing custom colors, and the HEX and RGB color code fields for entering specific color values. In the Swatches section, you can choose a color from the existing color palettes or reuse some of your recently selected colors.
Use the color picker
Click any color well in Pixelmator Pro or click
.Do any of the following:
Find the value of a color: Click the eyedropper
, then hover the pointer over a color to see its value. The color value changes as you move from one color to another on the canvas. To pick a color, simply click it.Choose a color: You can choose a color from the list of available color palettes or use the hue slider and the color field to pick it manually. The color picker uses the HSB-based (hue, saturation, brightness) color model, so to choose a color, you'd typically drag the hue slider first, then specify its saturation and brightness in the color field above. You can also manually enter HEX or RGB values to choose a specific color.
Manage the color palettes: Click the Color Palettes pop-up menu to browse your existing palettes or click the adjacent More menu
to remove, rename, and add new palettes.Save colors to use again: In the list of color swatches, click
or More
and choose Add Preset in the menu that appears. This adds your currently selected color to the currently selected color palette. You can also drag a swatch directly from the recently selected colors to the list of color swatches.
in the toolbar or any color well in Pixelmator Pro onto any object, shape, or selection in your image.
Note: When working with gradients, click any of the color stops to open the color picker.
Switch between foreground and background colors
Foreground and background colors are the two primary colors Pixelmator Pro will use when working with brushes, fill tools, and fill effects. By default, the foreground color is black and the background color is white. So, for example, if you paint on a layer with a brush or fill it with the foreground color, it will turn black, and if you switch to the secondary — background color — a white color will be used instead. You can change the foreground and background colors to any colors you want.
To switch between foreground and background colors, do one of the following:
- Press on your keyboard.
- Click the switch arrow next to the color well .
To reset foreground and background colors to black and white press the key on your keyboard.
