Figure 3-4: Use the eyedropper to choose a color in the color picker in Java

Creating Code39 in Java Figure 3-4: Use the eyedropper to choose a color in the color picker

3 Using the eyedropper, click a color The square now becomes the color that you select for your text More importantly, your selected text becomes that color, as well If the text appears to be a different color than the square, you still have the text highlighted Click anywhere on the canvas or click any tool to deselect the text and see the color applied to the text If you don t feel like moving your mouse all the way to the bottom of the screen, you can also change the color of your font by using the Colors area of the Tools panel or by using the new Colors panel They work the same way as the color picker in the Property inspector, so feel free to use whichever one you find most convenient The color picker contains a number of different views The default view uses Web safe color cubes You can switch views by clicking the right-facing triangle in the top-right corner of the color picker and then selecting a new view from the list that appears The other views include the following: Swatches panel: Displays your saved colors If you have any saved colors, they show up here If not, the panel displays the Web safe palette Continuous tone: Shows the colors as they move from lighter to darker left to right across the color picker You can find all these colors in the Web safe color cubes, just arranged differently

Windows OS: Shows the 217 Web safe colors that are also the Windows operating system colors Mac OS: Shows the system colors for the Mac operating system Grayscale: Provides a range of grays from light to dark Be warned though, only six grayscale colors are Web safe! What if the color you want isn t in the Web-safe palette Well, thankfully, Fireworks gives you a number of different coloring options On the top of the palette, you can find the System Color Picker (the color wheel near the middle of the top of the color picker) You can click the System Color Picker to see your other color options The System Color Picker offers several other ways for you to choose a color (as you can see in Figure 3-5): RGB values: Red, Green, and Blue make up all the colors that you can see on-screen Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity values: A different way of telling the computer how to combine red, blue, and green The color matrix: A visual representation of the Hue (the horizontal axis), Saturation (the vertical axis), and Luminosity (the extra strip on the right) values

Using the color matrix gives you the most flexibility in choosing a color because you can visually pick precisely the color that you want Here s how you use the color matrix to change the color of selected text: 1 Select the Text tool and place the cursor next to the first word that you want to change the color of Click and drag until you select all the text that you want to make a different color Alternatively, if you re using the Pointer tool, click the text to select it

2 Click the Color box to open the color picker 3 From the top middle of the color picker, select the System Color Picker The Color dialog box appears, as you can see in Figure 3-5 4 Place your cursor over the color that you want and click the mouse button You see a cross hair where you click At the center of the cross hair, you can see the color that you choose The higher you go in the matrix, the more saturated the color becomes If you want to make the color darker or lighter, click the shade that you want in the Luminosity bar next to the matrix, or click and move the slider to the right of the shade At this point, you still haven t changed the color of the text on the canvas 5 Click OK to apply the color to your text The text you selected on the canvas changes to the color that you selected in Step 4 If you want to use a color frequently, click the Add to Custom Colors button on the lower right after you select your custom color That way, whenever you need to use that color, you can click its square in the color picker instead of having to remember its RGB values or trying to find it in the color matrix