How to Add the Color Wheel in Photoshop CS6
Photoshop has a built-in hue color wheel that goes ignored by many. If you aren’t familiar with this tool you can give it a try without changing any complicated settings.
The color picker in Photoshop is easily one of the most-used tools when you are creating original work. In CS6 the default color picker is a boring hue box. Some people prefer the box, but if you’re like me the hue wheel is so much more appealing. I’ll show you how to change it in just a few steps.
In Photoshop click the Edit tab on the menubar and select Preferences > General. You can also press Ctrl + K as a shortcut to open this.
In the General tab of preferences click the HUD Color Picker dropdown and select the Hue Wheel. There are 4 different sizes available and I prefer the small one as the others take up most of the screen. Press OK to save changes and exit.
Now just press Alt + Shift + Right-click (mouse) to open up the color wheel.
In case you’re curious about the different sizes, I snapped a shot of each of them below. These screenshots are ordered from smallest to largest.
11 Comments
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Luna
Hi, how would I bring it up on a mac laptop with no mouse?
Thanks!
RyomaKuumi
For Mac, use the Command-Alt-Control, and touch your trackpad/tablet.
Louis
Hi I followed the steps and it’s really good except that my colour wheel looks like this:
http://www.trurodiocese.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Colour-wheel-hud-problems.jpg
Any ideas?
clawjelly
You have text selected. Just rightclick somedwhere else than the selected text as a workaround.
Chris
I followed the steps but shift+Alt+right click does nothing. I have move button selected.
I am using PS CC.
Chris
opps! I found it duh. Select brush or pencil first
chris
I tried it and it does not work. How did you get it to work?
Lu
So how do I keep it open? As soon as I’m not holding down the key combo it vanishes. Hugely frustrating.
RyomaKuumi
I don’t think it is possible to do so.
If you want to have a fixed color wheel, try using Coolorus 2.
It’s a plugin/add-on that is widely used by artists.
jaspreet
Its not working with the mac shortcut, is there a way to change the hotkeys ?
Junipero
Also MagicPicker color wheel for Photoshop (it’s a plugin) works pretty cool for this! You can keep it open, closed, come up with a shortcut and switch modes etc.