foreground/background color picker reversed

[David Johnson]

There’s a button in the tool bar with a two-sided arrow … it’s right next to the foreground and background color indicators.

[David Taylor]

no, that button and the shortcut key (x) just switches the foreground to the background color and vice versa. What I’m talking about is when I select a color from the swatch palette it goes to the background color instead of the foreground color. I can press the command key to make it go to the foreground color but this is reversed from the way it used to be.

DT Motion Pictures
https://www.davetaylormp.com

[David Taylor]

Okay, I finally found the answer searching over at Adobe’s site:

https://www.photoshopcafe.com/cafe/viewthread.php?tid=50679

EDIT: The above post is no longer online, scroll down a few replies in this thread and see the picture I posted below, that should clear it up for you. I’m still using CS4 so I’m not sure this is still an issue for the most current users.

DT Motion Pictures
https://www.davetaylormp.com

[David Johnson]

Sorry I misunderstood your question … although I’ve been using Photoshop many years, I usually only frequent the After Effects forum so I guess I’m too accustomed to questions like “what does this error message that says ‘not enough RAM’ mean?”. ;~)

[Ami Waite]

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for posting this answer. I’ve been checking around for a few minutes and was getting really frustrated with the “click the double arrow button” answer. I appreciate you taking the time to repost this link instead of leaving the rest of us to the “click the double arrow button” elitists.

[Heinzi Schmolke]

I have the same problem with the color picker, but the link with the solution is dead 🙁 could you please explain what the original post said? Thank you 🙂

[Dan Lawrence]

I registered to post this! Here is a cached version of that page with the solution (thanks Google)… This had me scratching my head for about half an hour!

Thanks to MutantPixel for the solution:

“The eyedropper tool whether directly selected or temporarily selected via ‘ALT’ with the brush tool feeds what it samples into the ACTIVE color. You can set the Foreground color as active, or the Background as active. If someone were to accidentally click on the BG color swatch itself in the color palette, they would set that one as the active color. It all still remains foreground and background, however, if the BG is set as active, then all future eyedropper samples would update the BG color instead of the FG.

Give it a try, open the color palette, click the color that is the BG color, you’ll see the grey square around it is now black, it is now the active color (likewise the FG has a grey outline now) Whenever you sample with the eyedropper, it will sample to the BG color. Want to switch back to sampling the FG color. just click that little FG swatch and it will work the way you expect. It has been like this since ver. 2 of Photoshop, when I started using it.”

[Heinzi Schmolke]

Woah! I’ve never noticed that there is a selection border in the color palette 😀

Thank you so much!

[Carmen Tedesco]

can you paste the answer, as the post has been removed.

[Carmen Tedesco]

thanks, i have been living with this headache for months….