Our scrapbook pages would be pretty boring if we ONLY ever used a 12-point, black, Times New Roman font in ALL our pages. One of the most exciting things about digital scrapbooking is how wide open our font and text options are!
I use a combination of the Eyedropper tool (also called the color picker or color dropper) and the Color Picker options box (there's a picture 3 paragraphs down) to customize font colors. The color picture options box is used with both background/foreground and the text options bar. (See the image at right to see which tools from the toolbar I'm talking about.)
Ok, so you have a layout you're working on and you want to change the color of the text. Ready?
First, type your text, put it in the approximate place you want it to be, and alter the font and text size until you are happy with it. This will give you something to work with. You can always make additional changes later.
Next, figure out which color in your layout you want to use for the text, or at least what color you want to start experimenting with. (Sometimes it takes trying two or three – or ten – before you find just what you’re looking for.) Use the color dropper (Eyedropper Tool) to pick the color. Zoom in for more precise selection if needed. Clicking on a color changes the current foreground color to the color you've clicked on. In this example, I'm using a picture of my best friend's ADORABLE daughter and using the colors from her shirt. This picture shows an extreme close-up of the shirt so I can get the colors I want -- the green color has been selected as foreground. The background is pink. [Oh, and pretend for the next paragraph that the current foreground color is pink, ok? ;o)]
Once you get the color you want, within the toolbar click on the foreground color box once to pull up the color picker options box (which is shown at right.) There is a box at the bottom right of this box with a 6 digit color code (#3 in the picture.) Highlight and copy this code (“Ctrl” + “C” is copy.)
Now select the Text Tool, hover the mouse over the text you want to change, and click to open up its layer. Highlight the text you want to change, then at the top of the screen, in the tool options bar, click on the font’s color box to open up it’s color palette. (Here is picture showing, going from top to bottom in red: where the color box in the tool options bar is, the text I have highlighted to change, and the foreground and background boxes in the toolbox.)
Remember where we got the 6 digit code from the foreground? Now that we're in the TEXT's color picker options box, highlight the text's current color’s code and paste the foreground code we just copied (“Ctrl” + “V”) in its place. The color picker options box should automatically change to reflect the new color.
"Save" to get out of this box. The text you selected should now be the new color (you’ll need to click on it once to un-highlight it.) If the color needs some adjustment, highlight the text again and open the color picker options box in the tool options bar. (Remember the picture of it, 3 paragraphs above? Here is is a second time, for easy reference.) See the circle in the color box? (#1 in the picture.) This lets you know the value of the currently selected color. When you put your mouse in the big box with all the colors, the arrow turns into a circle. Clicking directly above the circle representing the current color will change the color a little lighter, and clicking directly below it will 
select a color a little darker. You can preview the changes compared to the current color in the box between the colors and the ok button (#2 in the picture.) It will show the original on the bottom and the new selection above it. No changes are permanent until you hit ok to save out of the box.
Here is the finished page I was working on, of Aowyn (cutest baby girl in the whole wide world!!!)
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Hi,
What a wonderful site, it has been so helpful for a beginning scrapbooker like myself!
Thank you! :)
Posted by: Dea Whitaker | October 21, 2006 at 10:56 PM