Picking the avarage colour of a picture..how?

#1

Is there a method to do this? I want to choose colors from a picture to know what colors i can work from. So I won’t be adding crazy colors that’s nothing like the reference.

#2

So do you want to find an average of all pixels in an image, like your title here suggests? I’m not sure how that would be very helpful. Or do you want to grab a pixel’s color from a different document? Try re-phrasing you question.

#3

I want to be able to see what colors there are on a picture. But i found a website that somewhat does this.
http://whatsitscolor.com/

This is what it does:
[b][b]

Whats its color is an image-color processing utility that will evaluate an image and give you the image’s primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image. Extremely useful when creating any type of designs around an image. The more colorful the image, the better the results. Results will display your image on the best suited background for that image. [/b]

I want to be able to see (with my colour sampler tool) what colours were used, the complimentary colors. So if i can see through the color sample tool, then I’ll be able use the same complimentary colors to my own art(my art is just black,gray and white). So I want to pick the avrage colours on a picture which should be the complimentary colors, right?[/b]

#4

I still don’t really understand what exactly you are wanting to do, or why the average colours should be complimentary (what exactly are they complimenting?). But I will try and offer some suggestions, perhaps one of them will hit…

     If you want to sample a colour from a reference (like a photo) so that you can paint with that colour. You can just click on the colour you want with the eye dropper tool, and it's yours.
 
     If you want to see the numerical value of a colour you can open the "info" window (windows > info) and that will tell you the numerical value of the colour you are rolling your mouse over.

Hopefully you already know that, so moving on...
 
     If you want to create a colour palette to work from using only the colours from your reference then you can...
 
     Duplicate the reference
 
   [b]Image > mode[/b] and convert it to index colour
 
   Then [b]image > mode> colour table[/b]
 
     That should bring you up a list of colours, which you can then save as a swatch to work from.
 
     If you want to sample a broad range of colour values from the reference (presumably to avoid sampling noise pixles) the you can duplicate the image and try a number of filters which will simplify the tones and colours for you, such as...
 
     Mosaic
 
   Gaussian blur
 
   Median
 
     Then sample colours from here. Newer versions of photoshop even have an eyedropper setting which will take the average colour of all the pixels inside different sized rectangles centred on your cursor.
 
     If you want to find the average colour of the entire image, then you can duplicate the image and reduce it to 1 x 1 pixles. Then blow it up again and sample from there.
 
     Or you could reduce it to small (like 50 x 50) and then run a couple of gaussian blurs over it.
 
     If you want to see the complimentary colour then I would suggest [b]Ctrl + I[/b]
 
     Or you could do a combination of all these things. Like simplify the colours using mosaic and then make a swatch.
 
     If you are going to need to do this stuff repetitively and can't be bothered going through all that over and over, then I would suggest you create an action for it... and Photoshop will do it all for you at the touch of a button.

Edit:

If you want get the colours for your triadic colour sceme you talked about in your other post. Then I would suggest you build an action that bumps the hue around by +120

You could even make and action that opens a new window (say 150 x 50) and fills it with your sampled forground colour, and then selects two 50 x 50 squares and adjusts the hue by +120 for one and -120 for the other, and then places a colour sampler over each box.

You could even make an action that creates a whole big table of colours for each of your complimentry scemes and lables them and makes a swatch for you too.

#5

Or you could use your eyes, look at the image, and pick the color. This always works. :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

If you want the average colour, try filter/blur/average.

#7

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.