Small gripe - Colour dropper

[NDenekamp]

I feel bad for nit-picking here, but this is something i've been running into from time to time...

I think a small improvement to the colour dropper tool (the magnifying tool that allows you to 'read' a colour from a reference picture for example) could make it a lot more useful!

I don't know how it is for Windows, but at the moment on the Mac, if you use the colour dropper on an external image, it measures the exact single, middle, pixel of the magnifying frame. This can make it very hard to get a good colour reading if your are referencing slightly grainy pictures, or ones that have suffered some jpg-artifacting. 

Perhaps if the measures area could be the average of a 3 x 3 pixel block, this might give you more consistent readings and make it easier to quickly pick the colours off reference material. What do you think?


N

[Claus Jensen]

It is a good idea, but sometimes you also want that exact pixel value.
I guess it could work together with a hot key - holding the hot key (Ctrl / Alt or something) would give you an average value for a 3x3 block?

[edwardo]

Its not a bad idea. Ive only ever had this problem picking colours from really high res or really lo res images. But I agree that often one needs to pick the EXACT pixel value

[NDenekamp]

Hey, Thanks for the responses!

I agree that sometimes you need the precise pixel reading, so the option to take an average or precise reading would be excellent!

As an example of when I would like to average the reading, I've attached a reference image for a maple wood (courtesy of wooddatabase.com)

1st - In the first image you see the whole image with the close up area highlighted
2nd - The close up shows more clearly how even the base light colour of the wood is made up of light and dark lines, neither of which is the base colour of the wood, but the average them is.

3rd -  On the Mac, the digital colour meter app, found in the utilities folder, allows the adjustment of the aperture of which it gives an average reading. I could use this and feed the readings back into KeyShot, but it would be great it I wouldn't have to break my workflow  and do it all from within KeyShot itself.


N