Controlling Photoshop: Color Picker, Part Two!

So now that I've blogged about the technical reasons for switching your color pickers mode. Now I want to go into how to think about this while coloring, which will be easier with some visual aid. heres a doodle I'm going to color:

Dragon Suit McStabby

Alright, so lets put some base colors on this. 

So at this point its time to start thinking about light. As we established, the default color picker is in "hue" mode. I think thats the reason that I see a lot of pallets like this when people first start digitally painting in PS:

Now, for one, I don't like making the little blob of on canvas color swatches. I generally just use the color picker when ever I need a new color and use the eye drop tool to gain access to colors if used already. The only time Ive used these blobs is when I'm specifically using limited color.  

Anyway, Heres that pallet in action. 

Okay, so other than some sloppy quick application, you can see this is a functional selection of colors. Still, I like retina burning rainbows and toxic purple secondary light sources. The problem is finding those colors in this:  

to me is really tedious. Finding a blue that will go over my orange involves a lot of messing with the color slider and adjusting the brightness and contrast in the color field. Really what I wan to do is start with my orange and simply add blue, not start with a blue and adjust its brightness. So lets look at this chart from the last blog of the color picker in red mode.

In red mode you can adjust based on color rather than brightness and saturation of the hue you already have picked out. The amount of red will be locked by the color slider, and you can modify the amount of green and blue in the color field. 

Here is the base orange

Alot of red, a little green and a smidge of blue.

To get a shadow color, I'm going to add some blue, and take out some green. 

This gives me a salmon-y pink, but note that the color slider will display what will happen if I start to also take away red with the hue I currently have selected. I'm going to take away some red and green, and add some more blue. 

Now I have a purple, sweet. It might look a little odd as a color blob, which is why I hate color blobs. for proof of concept lets throw that purple over the base colors:

Hey, thats not too shabby! Way more vibrant than the hue pallet equivalent. Of course, when actually working this is all about flexibility and experimentation. I like to play with different color pickers, layer modes, and overlaying textures while I color. I hope this helps explain the color picker and gets you to try something new in your next PS session!