Arta

Working with colors requires a well trained eye. Sometimes, the difference between two colors can be very sublime and hard to spot. If you see an interesting color and decide to use it on your own web site or in any other project, it will be difficult to reproduce it using conventional tools. Developed by PegasoSoft, Arta will help you create your own palette of colors. Besides standard color pickers, you will find advanced tools and features, which will make your work easier.

Arta is supported by Windows 2000 and all the higher versions. It can be installed like any other lightweight application, without needing high end hardware. The setup process is fast and you will not have to make any advanced settings or reboot your computer.

Arta features a wide range of palette formats, color models and visual models and much more. They are placed under different tabs, on the software's small interface. A color picker can be found under the first tab. You can use it to select colors by clicking and dragging over a color hue, on the main area of the interface. As you click and drag over the colors, their numerical value is displayed on the upper edge of the window. You can select a different format, such as RGB hex, HTML, Delphi, Visual C++ and more, from the main settings panel.

The organization of the color hues can be changed from cartesian coordinates to a color wheel or a color circle with the options on the right side of the interface. This area contains other options as well, which can be used to change the fixed color (red, green or blue) and its parameters. It is also possible to select a different color model, like RGB, CMYK, HSB and more.

When a color is picked, it will be stored, along with a numerical value, in one of the four dialog boxes on the right side of the interface. You can store a color in each of these boxes. When you are done, you may copy them to the clipboard by clicking the icons, next to each dialog box. The colors you copy to the clipboard can be found at any time under the last tab on the interface.

A color wheel can be found under the second tab, where you may select a color and its exact opposite on the wheel. Other selection patterns can be selected with the options on the right side of the window. Arta lets you select a color from the screen as well. The feature can be found under a different tab, where you need to select an eye-drop tool and click anywhere on the screen. That area will be captured and displayed on the interface, using a very high zoom level, so you can select any color. You may also take a screenshot, capture a specific area, a window or part of it, with the tools found in a different tab.

If you want to test your colors, you can use a color mixer, where you can drag and drop your selected colors over different sketches. If you place a color over another one, it will be replaced. The colors will be mixed. For example, if you add white and then a dark blue, you will get a lighter blue.