Good Color Picker Tool that runs in the background?

Question

I am in search of a color picker software running in the background. ( like SnagIT )

As I am investing a lot of time in design right now, I need to pick colors from the desktop/websites and mix new ones on the go.

Basically I want to be able to mix color and pick colors from the desktop on the go ( without the need of opening Gimp or Paint )

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Just Color Picker

Features:

• Five formats of colour value: HTML, RGB, HEX, HSB/HSV, and HSL.
• 3x, 9x and 15x zoom of any screen area.
• Picked colours history. History saving function for future use of the picked colours. Removal of colours from the history.
• RGB and RYB colour wheels to display triads and complementary colours.
• Two harmonious colour finders. With this feature you can easily pick harmonious colours, for example, for your web site. Just choose your favourite colour and the colour picker will find the best colours harmoniously matched with yours.
• RGB & HSV colour editors to edit a picked colour.
• Gradient between two latest-picked colours to allow you to pick a colour from a wide range between the chosen colours.
• Optional stay-on-top.
• User-defined hotkey to capture colour info (Alt+X by default).
• Copying the colour value or its selected part to the clipboard just by button click.
• Conversion of HTML, HEX or RGB colour codes into corresponding colours.
• No installation required. Just Color Picker is a portable application and can be run directly from a USB stick.
• Multilingual interface Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Answer 2

It's been a while since I needed this, but I think it was ColorPick I used. One of the previous versions though. No idea if it's still very lightweight (but I suppose so).

Answer 3

Is Pixie a possibility? It floats as the topmost window, you can put it in the corner if you want:

It also has hotkeys to quickly copy the colors or create custom colors:

• Ctrl + Alt + C to copy the HTML color code

• Ctrl + Alt + X for the color mixer (add custom color to palette)

• Ctrl + Alt + Z to magnify

Answer 4

Try PicPick , which has powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc.

Answer 5

I would also recommend (and upvote if I could) Pixie. It is a great solution for identifying colors, copying, and pasting them into other applications like Photoshop or Illustrator.