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Hi
Thank you for your great tool

My suggestion is the following:

A color picker would be very helpful

- If this color picker would directly send the color into photoshop or illustrator it would be helpful (otherwise it could be copied into clipboard, choosing the format would be good)

-an option , once activated would make the mouse tranform into color picker if it hover over the window (this will save click if you wanna quickly get many colors)

thanks



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-02-27 16:12 by PureRef.

PureRef already has a color picker which you can activate by holding S and left click dragging over the pixels you want to pick from. It sounds like it fulfills all your requests but give it a try and let us know if you have any additional suggestions for it!

The About page and the keybinder in PureRef are good references to find already existing functionality so check them out if there is anything else you are missing that might already exist (or to find features you don't even know you need!)

I think what loumizhu meant was using Adobe Photoshop's color picker inside the PureRef window.

That would indeed be awesome, but I've never seen anything like that before with Photoshop.

I think the problem is that their color picker doesn't work outside the application window (except like this, but it's not all that useful for a fast workflow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv9QqKMIpKs).

Just as an example: In Unity 3D the color picker works on the whole screen, even outside of the application bounds. I could use it to pick the colors of my desktop background or the windows task bar and so on.
So from Unity 3D, using its color picker, I can pick the color directly from an image inside PureRef, without having to hold S and left click, then copy the code/values etc. which can be really cumbersome (especially while painting in Photoshop).

At least that is what I think loumizhu meant. Would it even be possible to implement something like that from your side? It would make PureRef really perfect.

But it is already great as it is, don't get me wrong! I love PureRef. :D



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-06-28 22:46 by yzeal.

Do you mean to pick some color from PureRef outside the PureRef window? In that case yes it should be possible to do. Or do you mean that you would want some integration with Photoshop? Which might be harder to do from our side.

How do you mean that the photoshop feature in the video is not that usefull?

Wow, thanks for the quick reply! :)
I meant the latter.

Well, the feature in the video only works as shown when you are zoomed out of the document far enough so that all of it is visible at the same time. (As it very conveniently is in all the videos that show this trick...)

When you are zoomed in on an image, the eyedropper tool scrolls it when you drag it towards the edges of the canvas (as it should, that's a useful feature). But when you're painting, this is not what you want to happen when you just want to pick a color from your reference.

Try it, you'll see why that interrupts your workflow pretty badly. (Keep in mind: You'll typically use the eyedropper every few seconds while painting.)

I'm an illustrator for a video game company. There are many cases when I have to match a color key from a reference image (for a set of images) or a mood sketch for work. In these cases I just compile the reference and overlay a second window in Photoshop instead of using PureRef. But that brings its own set of problems...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-06-29 05:37 by yzeal.

Thanks for the detailed explanation of the problem!

We understand that it is an issue which might limit the usefulness of PureRef and will look into what kind of options we have to improve in this area. However it might be worth asking Photoshop to improve their functionality as well since they clearly have the technical solution for it, just not allowing enough user control.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-07 16:17 by Arookh.

Was searching for duplicates of what I want to suggest and found this feature which I didn't know about :). But I have a suggestion - improvement: add a `copy` button that will copy the hex value (including # sign?!), would be much easier than `S+click` -> `copy` -> `ctrl+c` -> `ctrl+v` :)

Was searching for duplicates of what I want to suggest and found this feature which I didn't know about :). But I have a suggestion - improvement: add a `copy` button that will copy the hex value (including # sign?!), would be much easier than `S+click` -> `select` -> `ctrl+c` -> `ctrl+v` :)

Thanks for the suggestion! That would indeed be handy, we will look into it!

Hi there,

I found a simple solution for easy color picking from Pureref to Photoshop:

I wrote a simple AHK code that activates Pureref, samples color, copies the color code, activates photoshop, bring up Photoshop color window, pastes that code and closes the color window. All of that in less than a second and by pressing a single button.

Regards,

Hi everyone! since I was having the same situation and the previous user talked about a script. I decided to write my own AutoHotKey script to easily pick colors from PureRef and send it directly to Photoshop by pressing ALT + CLICK while hovering the PureRef target area, this without interrupting the workflow and doing complicated procedures.

Here you have both the PasteBin link to check the script and the google drive link to download the ZIP with the script and the compiled EXE.

NOTE: Photoshop "Foreground Color Picker" tool keyboard shortcut must be configured for this to work, use " / ".

---

AHK Photoshop x PureRef Color Picker v1.1 (by Jezer Andino)

https://pastebin.com/SdbYtLiw

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6I5__gejeYNa2lQb28wWS13TEE/view?usp=sharing

Enjoy!
:D



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-07 12:32 by JezerArt.

Awesome, thanks for sharing! :)

A pleasure!, by the way, I updated the pastebin with v1.2 code and uploaded a new ZIP to google drive :)

---

v1.2 (July 8, 2017)
- Added condition to avoid running the script when clicking outside PureRef.
- Improved ALT key detection, now 'Left ALT' or 'Right ALT' will be detected.
- Clean up.

---

https://pastebin.com/SdbYtLiw

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6I5__gejeYNSi1zclRlWENKdjQ

Edit: I will add a feature to allow setting / specifying the Photoshop Color Picker key, so if somobody need to use a different key than " / " can do so without much trouble. And allow selecting different action delay speed (Ex: 150ms default, 250ms and 350ms), this to adjust to different system speeds, in case a system takes more time to bring up the Color Picker window. Settings would be saved into a .ini text file.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-07-08 17:44 by JezerArt.

Here it is v1.3, now it have a readme.txt as well in the ZIP at google drive. Check the changelog! I uploaded preview screenshots at the bottom too :)

Enjoy!

===============================================================================
AHK Photoshop x PureRef Color Picker v1.3 (by Jezer Andino)
===============================================================================

Description:

Easily pick color from PureRef window and set it as foreground color
in Photoshop by pressing "ALT + CLICK". Both PureRef and Photoshop must
be running. Photoshop "Foreground Color Picker" keyboard shortcut must be
configured for this to work, right click the tray icon to access the option to
change it (default key is: / )

If you experience issues while using this script, like for example you
get a Photoshop error saying something about invalid value or something, try
selecting a higher "Action delay", right click the tray icon to access the
option to change it (default is 150 milliseconds).

USE THIS SCRIPT AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING
THAT HAPPENS WHILE USING IT. IT HAS BEEN TESTED AND SHOULD WORK AS INTENDED.
I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CHANGES MADE TO IT.

If you have a bug and want to report it, or just have a suggestion to make
this script better, feel free to contact me here: jezerart@gmail.com

===============================================================================

Changelog:

v1.3 (July 10, 2017)
- Added option to specify the shortcut key for the Foreground Color Picker in Photoshop.
- Removed default AutoHotKey menu items in the tray icon for simplicity.
- Added ini code to save and read settings.
- Added tray icon menu option "Action delay..." to allow switching between
150ms (Default), 250ms, 350ms and 450ms. This adds flexibility for slower
systems that take more time to bring up the Color Picker window in Photoshop.
I will consider adding longer delay options in the future just in case, maybe
750ms and 1000ms (1sec).

v1.2 (July 8, 2017)
- Added condition to avoid running the script when clicking outside PureRef.
- Improved ALT key detection, now 'Left ALT' or 'Right ALT' will be detected.
- Clean up.

v1.1 (July 7, 2017)
- Removed unnecesary debug code.
- Added Hex support module credit and source link.

v1.0 (July 6, 2017)
- Initial release.

===============================================================================

https://pastebin.com/SdbYtLiw

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6I5__gejeYNbThqZmlZTjNLc2c

---

Preview Screenshots

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6I5__gejeYNbDdiOE8tMTRrT1k

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6I5__gejeYNalg3N0p2VTZMUGs

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6I5__gejeYNenZqS3ZPVEpiWEk

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6I5__gejeYNaTAxVGgxRldyQlE

SeeYa!
:D

Hello, do you still provide access to your tools somewhere? I would really like to test it but the drive link is no longer valid.
Thanks