ColorPic is a free app that allows you to pick any color from the screen and displays its code in HEX and decmial.
It features a versatile color mixer and the ability to create and save color palettes.
It also offers a number of others functions such as a customizable magnification area and the ability to snap to the nearest websafe color.
Most people working with websites and/or with design will invariably need a “color picker” program that can identify the color code of any pixel on screen.
There are many such free programs, but of all that I have tried ColorPic is by far the best. Here’s what I like about it:
- Allows you to store captured colors inside pallets which you can come back to later (to the tune of 16 colors per pallet). You can create as many of these as you like.
- Snap to nearest websafe color: once you grab your color a little “websnap” button will appear close to its code on the ColorPic interface. Clicking on this will snap to the nearest websafe color. Very cool.
- Magnifier: this is available as part of the ColorPic interface. You can increase/decrease magnification or overlay a grid.
- Color mixer: click a tab in order to switch between the 4 nifty color mixer tools that are available.
- I like that you do not select your desired color using the mouse button; this means you can run ColorPic then go in and out of windows/pages until you find the color you want. Once found you can use the mouse or you can use hotkeys to capture it (use alt-tab to get back into ColorPic, F1-F12 to pick one of the available color slots, and CTRL-G to grab it).
There are many freeware color-picker programs around; I’ve tried a number of these from tiny, minimal programs to feature laden and top-heavy ones. What I like about ColorPic is that it manages to pack a very nice set of features into a very small app that uses just over 1 meg of memory.
Version tested: 4.1
Compatibility: Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, Me, XP, Vista (make sure to download the correct version for your OS).
Go to the program page to get the latest version (approx 579K).
