Colour Watcher mk1

I wrote this program (a mk2 version is under the Lab Colour Space page) because I'm a little colour-challenged! That is to say I do not know and can not predict what channel values make up a particular colour. It has helped me learn about channels and helped me adjust images. I have found other programs on the web that monitor colour, but they require one to have their window selected to get the colour (sometimes with a mouse click). I wanted a program that would show me the channels that make up the colour as I was moving around. It is invaluable when you are 'curving' to see how the change affects different parts of the picture.

Just by moving the mouse over an image you can quickly see if there is a colour cast as the display is shown as analogue clocks and bar charts rather than just numbers.

The Colour Watcher program continually monitors or samples the colour under the mouse and can be used in one of three ways...

a simple monitor	When the program is run in minimized mode, the value of a colour (in any colour space you specify) will be continually shown in the program's icon at the bottom of the screen.
visual form	The Hue clock, with 'H' as the hand, 'S' as the length of it and an inner circle for 'B'. Below that is the mouse's coordinates. The Lab colour mode clock with the inner circle for 'L' and the hands showing the values of the 'a' (Green <-> Magenta) and 'b' (Blue <-> Yellow) channels. These are at 45 degrees to each other with '+' on the right. An RGB and CMYK vertical graph.
spot watcher	You can specify up to 8 points that will be monitored. The outside frame is the original colour and the current values are shown in the middle of the clocks.

There is, however, a wee problem with this program. I wrote it in Visual Basic which can not take account of the monitor colour profile - so the values will not be 100% accurate; but they are not too far out on my system compared to Photoshop's eye dropper (I normally use sRGB on a calibrated monitor). It is easy to check if they agree by monitoring colours in both programs at once!

The Hue clock is great when adjusting individual channel curves and is the sort of visual aid Artists use. For instance Flesh tones should be between 8-15 degrees, or an hour hand position of 12:30. So by placing a watching point on a face, one can check that any adjustments made do not take the skin tones away from what they should be.

Here are some patches that cover 90% of all skin colours - use the Hue clock as you adjust the image to match to one of them (just drag the image into Photoshop or other program).

How well do you know the colour spaces and channels? I find Lab much easier to visualise than RGB when trying to change colours. The following image shows a scene in their channels

Full image Lab 'a' channel - in 'a' colour Lab 'b' channel - in 'b' colour

Lab Luminosity channel Lab 'a' channel - gray scale Lab 'b' channel - gray scale

RGB Red channel - gray scale RGB Green channel - gray scale RGB Blue channel - gray scale

Notice the red barn and blue sky in each channel - and it is not more obvious that green grass is a mixture of -ve 'a' (green) and +ve 'b' (yellow) and than in the RGB channels? Do the same experiment with your pictures using these 2 Photoshop Actions (if you do not know about Photoshop actions - trawl the net, as they are really worth knowing).

If you wish to use the program, just download it (virus checked by avast), unzip it and place the program on your PC (sorry it will not work on Macs) and create a short-cut to it. The program is completely free as is the colour clock below. I have since written a better watcher program that you may find useful - see under the Lab pages.

If you find it hard, like I do, to deduce the channel values of a specific colour, then you could learn, or test yourself, on a colour clock program I wrote - it has no hands, just changes colour to tell the time! The image opposite shows it in full 'cheating' mode, where it tells me the answer - one can run it just with the top bar showing and then guess the values - great fun - but there is a better one under the Lab Colour Space page!
I use to leave it running, and every now and then see if I can guess the channel values - try it if you like, unzip it and place the program on your PC (sorry it will not work on Macs) and create a short-cut to it. The program randomly chooses one of four clock mechanisms, just to keep you on your toes!

Neither of the programs write anything to your computer and so just delete them if you do not find them helpful.