There are times when you want to know the exact color values of a part of a screen on your computer. For example, you may want to place Google AdSense ad and want to exactly match the background color of your web page with the background color of an AdSense unit. Or you may want to exactly match the background color of your web page with the background color of your logo. Or else, you may want to adapt an image color to match those on your site. There may be many similar situations. ColorPad is a tiny but very powerful utility to do just that.
The download size for ColorPad utility is only about 82 KB. It occupies a very small area on your screen. The image of ColorPad which is shown above is its actual size image when it is run on the computer; it is only about 92×142 pixel. But then, don’t underestimate its power just because of its small file size or its small window. It offers tons of customizable settings, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
It allows you to pick color of any part of any screen on your computer. It can also generate colors on the fly. The color picked will be shown in the tiny screen of ColorPad. And, just below the color, it will show you the color values of the color picked by you. These color values are shown in RGB format and they are also shown in hex codes. For example, the above image of ColorPad shows the RGB color values of the picked color as (053, 132, 230) and the hex values of the color as (35, 84, E6).
That’s not all. You can zoom in on even the smallest part of your screen in varying degrees up to the magnification factor of 16x. Just have a look at the following image to see how it can be done:
Once you have enabled the zoom in feature in ColorPad, it can show pixel-wise colors of any part of the screen and you can then pick up any pixel for finding out its color values. This feature is quite useful if you want to pick color values from an image which uses gradient colors where every adjoining pixel in the image may have different color values and it may be necessary to pick an exact pixel. Just have a look at the following two images for comparing the utility of the zoom in feature of ColorPad. The first image shows the color picked by ColorPad when zoom in is not enabled, while the second image shows the colors picked by it when zoom in is enabled (see the different pixel colors in its tiny screen when zoom in feature is used).
To get any color currently on any part of the screen, just left-click on the tiny color screen of ColorPad and hold down the left mouse button until the cursor turns into a crosshair (+ sign). Now, you can now move your mouse over any part of the screen while still holding down the left mouse button. The tiny screen of ColorPad will regularly get updated with the color currently under the crosshair when your mouse moves to different colors on the screen. Moreover, the bottom part of ColorPad’s screen will get regularly updated with the color values of the currently selected color. Once you are satisfied with the color selected, release the left mouse button and the color will be successfully loaded in the ColorPad.
You can also manually modify the selected color in ColorPad. Click on the little + or – signs next to the color value numbers on its screen. Holding down the mouse button will auto-increment/decrement the value(s). You may also click and drag these buttons for a faster, more accurate way to change the values.
You can change the settings by right-clicking on the right and left parts of ColorPad to activate the menu.
ColorPad can be very useful for graphic designers, from beginer to expert, in their development of computer graphics. It supports many options from anti-dithering to skins support. It supports several keyboard shortcuts which are useful for accessing the functionalities made available by it. It also supports always-on-top and snapping to the screen edge to facilitate easy color-picking from any screen.
While ColorPad does not have context-sensitive help, its installation files include a colorpad.txt file which includes useful exhaustive instructions as to how to use its various features.
Moreover, ColorPad is absolutely free. If you are a graphic designer or want to tweak your logos or images for different color combinations, you must try it.
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