Everyone knows about the colour picker at the bottom of the tool bar in Photoshop. Click on it, up comes the Adobe Colour Picker, choose your colour, click OK and you’ve set your foreground colour, ready for use with paintbrush, text, filter, whatever.

BUT! did you know that if you’re using the Brush tool you can hold down the ALT key and click into your canvas to bring up Photoshop’s new HUD (that’s Heads Up Display acronym fans!) Colour Sampling Ring.

Photoshop CS5's New Colour Sampling Ring with Lizard

In the Lizard based screen grab you can see the Colour Sampling Ring. Around it’s a neutral gray to keep your colour perception at it’s toppest. Inside the gray ring, the bottom half shows the current foreground colour, the top half shows the colour you’re currently moving over with your cursor.

Find the colour you like and let go, the ring disappears and you’ve set you new Foreground colour.

Bonus! Adobe Standard Colour Picker

The Standard Photoshop Colour picker via the HUD keyboard command

Blimey, if that wasn’t enough if you hold down CTRL-ALT-SHIFT (Mac) or SHIFT-ALT-right click (Win) and you’ll get the normal Adobe Colour Picker hovering over your canvas. Choose a colour and adjust the hue with the ramp on the right hand side.

Why this might not work

Watch out! These colour pickin’ shortcuts were only added in Photoshop C5 and need a supported 3D card..