In many cases you will need to determine a color from a screen shot and use that value in one of several formats in various color pickers or style sheets. Here are the two basic formats used in Web development:

- RGB Decimal - i.e., 240 54 100, where 240 is the red value, 54 is green value and 100 is the
  blue value.

- RGB Hexadecimal - i.e., F1 36 64 or as it is used in style sheets: #F13664. The "#" sign tells
  the style sheet parser that the color is expressed in hexadecimal

This tip will discuss how to use an eye dropper tool to acquire colors values.

Step 1: Acquire Eye Dropper utility
You will need the way of determining the color of items on the screen. Please go to the following URL to download and install the Eye Dropper 3.01 utility.

http://www.inetia.com/eyedropper_eng.php

Once you have download the Eye Dropper zip file, you can unzip the "eyedropper.exe" file and place it some where in your hard drive (there is no installer, the zip file contains the program only). You may wish to place a shortcut to the program on your desktop as well.

Note: it is important that you set your display depth to a high or true color setting, i.e., 15, 16, 24 or 32 bit. To do this, right-click any where on your desktop and select Properties and then the Settings tab. Then set the Colors popup to true or high color.

Set display to high or true color

Step 2: Measure the Standard Color Value
Bring up a graphic that has the standard color in it and then launch the Eye Dropper utility

Measure the standard color

Bring your cursor over the color you wish to measure and record the standard color R-G-B numbers either in the decimal (00 48 156) or hexadecimal (00309C).