Find the color of a pixel in an image

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Problem

You need to match the color in a photo or other image. PowerPoint has no way to do this.

Solution

There are several ways to do this:

• If you have the original image file, open it in an image editing program (anything from Photoshop to humble Microsoft Paint or Photo Editor will do) and use the program's tools to learn the color of the area you want.
• If you don't have the original image, you can usually copy and paste from PowerPoint into your image editing software. For various reasons, it's best to use MS Photo Editor for this, if you have it.
• If you do a lot of this, you'll want a utility program that allows you to do the job from within PowerPoint or any other program. There are several that give you a constant readout of any on-screen pixel you move your cursor over:
• ColorPicker from Image Integration
• Pixie from NattyWare
• And Sonia's favorite, Eyedropper (Click on "English version" at right if you don't speak Slovenian.)
• If you use Mac OSX, you already have a "pixel-picker" utility. From Finder, choose Go, Applications. Open the Utilities folder and doubleclick DigitalColor Meter.

Search terms:pixel,color,sample

Contents © 1995 - 2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

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