help making a panel w/ ability to use color picker/eyedrop

sAge · Post by **sAge** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:43 pm

I hope its ok to post this here. But this is only one of two places that I figured I would find some on to help / answer this question for me.
First off I have no programing skills what so ever.

I'm a tradition artist. And I'm trying to bring a little of that in to my work flow. I like working with a minimal color pallet. So I made a jpeg of one of my many color wheels that I made with watercolors based off of Michael Wilcox book "Blue and Yellow don't make Green" Great book.
I also know you can get the color picker panel from http://www.anastasiy.com/  But like I mentioned. I like working with minimal color pallet.

O.K So I put the jpeg into a swf/image loader. With a couple of buttons. I use a wacom. So I was going to hook that panel up to a button on my wacom pen. so I could pop it open and close it with a push of the button. I was hoping to be able to go to the color in the panel. Click and that be my for ground color. But that didn't work. I then tried the alt. button in brush mode and clicking in the panel. that doesn't work either. I know you can click in the image and drag to the panel to select a color. But thats just not a good work flow. I want to pop the panel open and closed when I want it.

I just want to be able to pop it open the panel. float over to the color I want. Pick it. Close the panel and keep painting. Like the swatch panel. But I like working with a color wheel. and I have way to many color wheels to make custom swatch pallets in a circular format. Is this even possable?

Any help, or advice would be very much appreciated. 
Thanks,
scott g

Heres a snap shot of what the panel looks like.
[/img]

xbytor · Post by **xbytor** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 5:06 pm

Neat problem. The simple solution is to open your color wheel as a document and then just use eye-dropper to get the color you want. Just use Ctrl-Tab to flip there and back in tabbed mode.

Any other solution would require some code. Take a look at the Kuler extension. You can set the foreground color by double clicking.

-X

sAge · Post by **sAge** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:05 pm

Thanks for the post xbytor,

I have used your approach. I have also had a layer with the pallet in it. But both of those just seem inefficient to me. And I just figured with the cofigurator I could make the use of these color-wheels more fun and efficient to use.

So you mentioned coding. Does this mean it is possible to pull this off? and if so can you point me in a direction where I can figure / learn how to do this?

Thanks for your time and all.

s

Paul MR · Post by **Paul MR** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:21 pm

How about using a configurator button to open one of your colour wheels and auto selecting the eyedropper. This way you could have several wheels to choose from.

Put your colour wheels in the content folder.
Make your buttons using "Run Javascript" and paste in the following code amending the PanelName and ColourWheelJpeg

Code: Select allopen(File(app.path+"/Plug-ins/Panels/Panel Name/content/ColourWheelName.jpg"));
selectTool('eyedropperTool');
function selectTool(tool) {
var desc9 = new ActionDescriptor();
var ref7 = new ActionReference();
ref7.putClass( app.stringIDToTypeID(tool) );
desc9.putReference( app.charIDToTypeID('null'), ref7 );
executeAction( app.charIDToTypeID('slct'), desc9, DialogModes.NO );
};

xbytor · Post by **xbytor** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:48 pm

sAge wrote:So you mentioned coding. Does this mean it is possible to pull this off? and if so can you point me in a direction where I can figure / learn how to do this?

The Kuler extension does this. If your on a Mac, you can find it at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CS4ServiceManager/extensions/kuler.

The javascript files are there along with the swf. No mxml file, unfortunately, but you may be able to find that at Adobe Labs somewhere.

I would be more specific but I'm still on the flash panels learning curve myself.

-X

sAge · Post by **sAge** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 7:23 pm

Paul,
I'll give this try when I get home from work. Thanks a ton!

xbytor,
Thanks again man. I do have kuler. And it is kule : ) I just like seeing a limited pallet. helps keep me focused on thecolor schem. I may be weird like that.

I did find a color picker for apple called "painters picker" which I like alot. It lets you chose three colors and then mixes them into a wheel format. very cool. But I dont know if I can apply the color picker window to a hot key. If so I'm hooked up.

http://www.old-jewel.com/ppicker/index.html

Thx again for the help guys
s

xbytor · Post by **xbytor** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 7:36 pm

I mentioned Kuler not as a substitute but rather as an example of how to implement a custom color picker.

But I don't know if I can apply the color picker window to a hot key. If so I'm hooked up.

Setting a hot-key for an app like this would be an OS thing. And would be very cool

If that's not possible, you could probably write a script that does a File.execute() on the app executable. That should bring the app to foreground.
Just wrap the script in an action, set a hot-key for the action and you're good to go.

-X

sAge · Post by **sAge** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 8:33 pm

Setting a hot-key for an app like this would be an OS thing. And would be very cool

Would it still be an OS thing even though I changed the default color picker to the painter picker in PS prefrence panel? Like this.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/pick-a-new-picker.html

xbytor · Post by **xbytor** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 8:54 pm

Didn't know you could do that. I'm a mac user, not a mac geek

If you can hot-key the color picker and it's set as the default, you should be set. If not, a little bit of script can be written to launch the color picker and set the foreground to whatever color is chosen.

-X

sAge · Post by **sAge** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 9:00 pm

cool thanks agAZin for all your help. Cant wait to try it tonight.