Selecting Colors for Painting

Painting tools use the foreground or background color, or both. In the Toolbox, instead of a pen ink icon for the foreground, a brush icon appears when you select a painting tool. The brush icon shows the foreground color, and the bucket icon shows the background color.

You can use any solid color for painting, including multicolored inks, such as gradients, symbols, textures, pattern, or hatch inks. Also, if you choose a spot color and edit pixels with a painting tool, Canvas X Draw converts the spot color to the image color mode; i.e., RGB, CMYK, etc. (See Image Modes for Canvas X Paint Objects.)

You can arrange paint objects in a document with vector and text objects that use spot colors, but only the vector and text objects will produce spot color separations.

To Swap the Foreground and Background Colors:

Press the X key while using a painting tool.

To Set the Foreground Color to Black and Background Color to White:

Press the C key.

To Select a Color for Painting:

1. Click the foreground or background color icon in the Toolbox.
2. In the Presets palette, on the Ink tab, click on an ink type and select a color.

You can also create new colors by using the various Inks managers located in the Attributes palette. (See Creating Color Inks.)

Picking Colors with the Color Dropper Tool

Use the Color Dropper tool to pick up color from an image or object. The color you select becomes the current background or foreground color that you can use for painting and drawing. (See Using the Color Dropper.)

While in Image Edit mode, select the Color Dropper by pressing Alt; however, you won’t be able to pick the background color.

You can identify whether you are in Image Edit mode by the Status bar or the following icon in the Properties bar: 

To Select the Background Color from a Paint Object:

1. Select the Color Dropper tool from the Toolbox. 

2. Click a color in the paint object or image.

   The background color changes in the Toolbox.

To Select the Foreground Color from a Paint Object:

1. Select the Color Dropper tool from the Toolbox.

2. Right-click a color in the paint object or image.

   The foreground color changes in the Toolbox.

See also:

• Image Modes for Canvas X Paint Objects
• Attributes Palette
• Using the Color Dropper