Shades Color Picker

The Shades Color Picker software is an incredibly useful tool for anyone who needs to choose colors. It functions as an add-on to the standard Apple Color Picker and adds an extra pane with grids of related colors. Shades uses the HSB color coordinates, which are often considered more intuitive than RGB coordinates.

To use this software, you select a center color, step size, and a color coordinate to hold constant. Shades then generates a grid of related colors, with one of the H, S or B values held constant while the other two vary. For example, selecting H-B holds the saturation constant while varying hue and brightness horizontally and vertically, respectively. Changing the center color will cause the grid to recalculate and redraw automatically.

There are multiple ways to set the center color, including using the controls on the panel or dragging and dropping a color chip onto the center of the grid or the color well at the top of the panel. The color well displays the currently selected color and is the color that will be sent as the selected color to your application. You can also click on any other color in the grid to make it the current color.

One of the most useful features of Shades is that you can drag a color chip from any of the color rectangles in the grid and drop it onto any application or color well that accepts color drags.

The only limitation of this software is that it provides a 30-day free trial. Overall, Shades is an excellent addition to the Apple Color Picker, making it much easier and more intuitive to choose colors.