I spy with my little ColorSpy...

How often have you wished for the ability to quickly sample the color anywhere on your screen?

I know I run into this all the time, with my less-than-ideal solution so far being grabbing a quick snap of the screen using the excellent Snag-it tool by TechSmith and then using the eyedropper tool in Photoshop. This works a charm, of course, but is convoluted. So, today, I finally stopped procrastinating (somebody's favorite word... you know who you are!) and Googled utility screen pixel color.

Up popped the open-source ColorSpy!

It's tiny, it works and it has made my life easier. Hope it helps you too!

Thanks to Tom Furuya for making such a useful little tool and releasing it (nice article too, btw.)

Update: Quick instructions on usage: Start it up and mouse over the area you want a color reading for. Press Ctrl-Shift. Now you can select and copy the values in the text field next to the color swatch.

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