How to Use the Eyedropper Tool

The Color picker, commonly called the Eyedropper, is the tool that samples a color from any pixel on the canvas and loads it into a color slot for immediate reuse. For Unturned™ modders working on 57 Studios™ icon packs, the Eyedropper is the second most-used tool after the Pencil because it guarantees consistent palettes across dozens of related assets. This reference covers the toolbar location, the keyboard shortcut, the difference between left-click and right-click sampling, and the standard workflows for color matching and palette extraction.

The Eyedropper's role in icon authoring goes beyond color matching. Senior contributors use the tool as the primary mechanism for palette discipline across multi-asset packs, as the primary mechanism for matching colors between in-progress icons and reference images, and as the primary mechanism for recovering palette state at the start of a session after the previous session's color slots have been lost. The tool is sufficiently central to professional icon work that mastery of its keyboard shortcut and its right-click variant is one of the documented prerequisites for productive multi-asset authoring.

This reference covers the mechanical operation of the Eyedropper, the four dominant workflows that depend on it, the comparison with equivalent tools in other editors, the common mistakes that new icon authors make, and the advanced techniques that senior contributors use to extract and manage palettes at scale. The reference ends with an extended frequently-asked-questions section and three appendix sections on related concerns.

Prerequisites

• Microsoft Paint open with at least one image loaded on the canvas. The image can be a blank canvas, a reference image, or a partially completed icon.
• Familiarity with the Pencil tool and the color slots. (Review How to Use the Pencil Tool if needed.)
• Comfort with high-zoom navigation, since accurate sampling typically requires zooming in past 400 percent. See How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing.

What you'll learn

• How to select the Color picker from the toolbar or via the keyboard.
• How to sample a color into the primary or secondary color slot.
• How to extract a complete palette from a reference image.
• How Paint's Eyedropper compares to the Eyedropper in other editors.
• The dominant workflows that depend on the Eyedropper.
• How to recover from common sampling mistakes.

Background

Eyedropper tools first appeared in raster editors in the late 1980s and have been part of Microsoft Paint since the early 1990s. The tool's underlying operation is simple: when you click a pixel, the editor reads the red, green, and blue values stored at that pixel and writes them into the active color slot. The Pencil, the Brush, and the Fill bucket then paint with that exact color until you change slots or sample again.

The Eyedropper's persistence across forty years of raster editing reflects the fundamental utility of color sampling. Before the Eyedropper, an artist matching a color from a reference image had to either approximate the color by eye and tweak iteratively, or read the RGB values from a separate inspector and type them into a color picker. Both approaches are slow and error-prone at small icon sizes where a difference of two or three in an RGB component can be visible. The Eyedropper collapses the whole sequence into a single click.

The tool's behavior in Paint is the simplest possible implementation of the concept. There are no averaging modes, no layer-aware sampling, no sub-pixel sampling, and no screen-wide sampling. The simplicity is a feature for icon work because the source images are already at single-pixel resolution and the colors are already discrete. The more sophisticated sampling modes that GIMP, Photoshop, and Krita expose are tuned for photographic source material that has continuous-tone gradients; they would be overkill and occasionally counterproductive for pixel art.

Did you know?

The original Microsoft Paint Eyedropper was added in Windows 95 as part of a broader expansion of the toolbar. Earlier Paintbrush versions had no sampling tool; users matched colors by reading the RGB values from a separate color editor dialog. The addition of the Eyedropper roughly doubled the speed of palette-consistent work overnight and is one of the most-cited examples of a small tool addition producing a large workflow improvement.

Selecting the Eyedropper

Via the toolbar

1. Look at the Tools group on the Home tab.
2. Locate the Color picker icon. It is shaped like a small medical eyedropper or pipette.
3. Click it. The icon highlights and the cursor changes to an eyedropper shape when hovered over the canvas.

Via the keyboard shortcut

1. Press the K key. Paint immediately switches to the Color picker.

Pro tip

Many users assume the shortcut is E for Eyedropper, but in Paint E activates the Eraser. Use K for the Color picker.

The K shortcut is the single most important productivity habit for icon work that involves color sampling. A session that uses the toolbar for every sampling action spends a measurable fraction of its time on mouse-to-toolbar-to-canvas-back-to-work cycles. The same session with the K shortcut spends the time on placing pixels instead. The improvement is documented at approximately twelve percent of session time once the shortcut is internalized.

The cursor change when the Eyedropper is active is a useful visual confirmation. The cursor becomes an eyedropper-shaped icon while over the canvas and reverts to a standard pointer over the toolbar or the menu bar. Verifying the cursor shape before the first click of a session prevents a class of off-by-one mistakes where the user intends to sample but is still in a different tool's mode.

Best practice

Memorize the K shortcut alongside the P shortcut for the Pencil. The K-P pair is the foundation of fast palette work: K to sample a color, P to paint with it. The two keystrokes are interleaved continuously throughout a typical icon-authoring session.

Sampling a color

With the Color picker active, the canvas behaves differently. The next click does not draw; it reads.

Action	Result
Left-click a pixel	Loads its color into Color 1 (primary).
Right-click a pixel	Loads its color into Color 2 (secondary).

After sampling, Paint stays on the Color picker tool. To return to drawing, switch tools by clicking the Pencil or pressing P.

Why two slots matter

Sampling into Color 2 with right-click lets you draw with two colors simultaneously: left-click to apply the primary color, right-click to apply the secondary. For pixel art with two prominent shades (for example, a metal highlight and a metal shadow), this halves the time spent switching tools.

The single-click sampling behavior makes the Eyedropper effectively a passive reader of the canvas. The tool does not modify any pixel; it only reads. The reading does change the active color slot, which is a state change, but the canvas itself remains untouched. The pattern means that the Eyedropper can be used freely during a session without any risk of accidentally modifying the work.

The Eyedropper does not have a click-and-hold mode that samples continuously as the cursor moves. Each click is an independent sampling event. The behavior contrasts with some other editors (notably GIMP) that include a continuous-sample mode for exploring an image's palette by hovering. The Paint Eyedropper requires explicit clicks for each sample.

Did you know?

The continuous-sample mode in other editors is sometimes useful for palette exploration but rarely useful for icon work. Pixel-art icon palettes are typically small (ten to thirty colors) and discrete; the value of continuously scanning across the canvas to discover the palette is low compared to a small number of well-aimed clicks. Paint's discrete-click model is well-matched to the icon authoring use case.

Sample-then-paint workflow

The most common Eyedropper workflow is to sample an existing color, then paint with it. The sequence below shows the exact mouse and keyboard events.

The sequence diagram shows the K-then-sample-then-P pattern that dominates fast palette work. The pattern has four discrete actions (press K, click reference, press P, click target) and completes in approximately one second once internalized. The pattern's compact structure is the largest single productivity win for icon work that involves frequent color matching.

The pattern extends to a two-color version that uses both color slots in a single iteration. The extended pattern is:

1. Press K to activate the Eyedropper.
2. Left-click the reference for Color 1.
3. Right-click the reference for Color 2.
4. Press P to return to the Pencil.
5. Left-click and right-click target pixels using both colors simultaneously.

The two-color pattern is documented as approximately fifty percent faster than the single-color pattern for icon work that uses two prominent colors in alternation. The pattern is the documented practice of senior contributors working on icons with strong directional lighting (metal-highlight-and-shadow workflows in particular).

Sequence of a two-color sampling pattern

The two-color pattern's value compounds with the duration of the work that uses both colors. A short detail pass that uses both colors for only ten pixels saves only a few seconds. A long pass that uses both colors for several hundred pixels saves several minutes by avoiding the slot reassignment that would otherwise be needed between every color change.

Use cases

Matching colors across multiple assets

When you are creating a set of related icons (for example, three rifle variants that share a common metallic finish), the Eyedropper guarantees that every asset uses the exact same RGB values. Open the first finished icon, sample its metal color into Color 1, then open the next icon and paint with that color. There is no opportunity for drift.

The pattern is the single largest improvement available for multi-asset pack consistency. Without the Eyedropper, palette drift across icons in a pack is almost inevitable: the contributor's memory of a color is unreliable across days or weeks, and re-creating the color from a hex code requires opening Edit colors and typing the values for every reapplication. The Eyedropper bypasses the memory and the re-creation entirely.

For very large packs (dozens of icons), the pattern scales by sampling from a shared palette reference rather than from individual icons. The shared reference can be the palette strip of any pack icon or a dedicated palette file. The pattern reduces the risk that an icon late in the production cycle has subtly drifted from the pack's canonical palette because each icon's colors trace back to a single shared source.

Pro tip

For very large packs, maintain a single "canonical palette" file that all pack icons sample from. The file contains the full pack palette as a strip of single-pixel rows. Every icon-in-progress samples from the canonical file rather than from sibling icons. The pattern guarantees that every icon in the pack uses exactly the same RGB values for every shared color.

Extracting a palette from a reference image

Some modders begin a project by collecting reference screenshots from in-game items or from inspirational artwork. The Eyedropper extracts the palette from the reference into a reusable strip.

1. Open the reference image in Paint.
2. Press K to activate the Color picker.
3. Sample the first prominent color with a left click.
4. Switch to the Pencil (P) and paint a small swatch in the corner of the canvas.
5. Repeat steps 2–4 for each unique color.
6. When the palette is complete, copy the swatch strip and paste it into the icon project.

Pro tip

For a more rigorous extraction, use a dedicated palette tool such as the Edit colors → Define custom colors panel. Each sampled color can be added to the Custom colors strip and persists for the rest of the Paint session.

The palette extraction pattern is most useful when the reference image is itself a pixel-art source (a screenshot of an existing pixel-art icon, a frame from a pixel-art game). The reference's colors are already discrete and the Eyedropper samples them cleanly. For photographic references, the same pattern works but produces more sampling errors because the photograph's continuous-tone gradients mean that adjacent pixels often have slightly different colors and the sampled color depends on exactly which pixel was clicked.

For photographic references, the corrective practice is to sample multiple pixels from a region that appears to be a single color and to choose the value that appears most frequently. The pattern approximates the averaged-sampling mode that GIMP and Photoshop expose but is done by hand in Paint.

Correcting palette drift

If you discover that an in-progress icon contains two nearly identical shades that should be one, sample the canonical shade and use the Fill bucket to replace the variant.

1. Press K, sample the canonical color into Color 1.
2. Press F to activate Fill.
3. Left-click the variant region. The Fill bucket replaces every connected pixel of the variant color with the canonical color.

The palette-drift correction pattern is the dominant cleanup workflow at the end of an icon. As an icon develops across a session, small drift can accumulate: a highlight pixel that was meant to be Color 2 was instead placed with a slightly different color sampled from a different region, or a shadow pixel was placed with a Color 1 value that was subsequently modified. The cleanup pass identifies the drift and corrects it.

The cleanup is most effective when the icon's palette is small and the canonical color for each role is well-defined. Icons with broad palettes (more than twenty colors) require more careful drift hunting because some apparent drift may be intentional variation. The corrective practice is to verify each drift correction against the canonical palette before applying it.

Building a brand-consistent palette across packs

Some modders maintain a consistent visual brand across multiple asset packs. The Eyedropper supports the brand consistency by enabling cross-pack palette sampling: the contributor opens a representative icon from a previous pack, samples its brand colors, and applies them to the new pack's first icons.

The pattern is the documented practice of contributors who publish recurring asset series (multiple rifle packs from the same studio, multiple vehicle packs in the same style). The brand colors are the visual signature that ties the series together; the Eyedropper is the mechanism by which the signature stays consistent across years of production.

Best practice

For any contributor producing more than one asset pack, maintain a brand palette file that captures the colors common to all packs. Every new pack begins by sampling from the brand palette file. The pattern produces a recognizable visual identity across packs without explicit brand documentation.

Eyedropper behavior across editors

Paint's Color picker is intentionally simple. Other editors expose additional options that more advanced workflows depend on.

Editor	Sample multiple pixels (average)	Sample from any layer	Sample from screen outside canvas	Hex output displayed
Microsoft Paint	No	N/A (no layers)	No	No (use Edit colors)
GIMP	Yes, configurable radius	Yes	Yes, with point sample on screen	Yes
Photoshop	Yes, 3x3 / 5x5 / 11x11 average	Yes	Yes	Yes
Krita	Yes, configurable	Yes	Yes	Yes
Paint.NET	No	Yes	No	Yes

For most Unturned icon work, Paint's single-pixel sampling is sufficient because the source images are small and the colors are already discrete pixels. For high-resolution photographic references, GIMP or Photoshop's averaged sampling produces a cleaner result.

The averaged-sampling mode in GIMP and Photoshop reads the colors of multiple adjacent pixels and computes the arithmetic mean. The result is more robust against single-pixel anomalies in the source (compression artifacts, noise) but is less precise for icon work where the user wants to sample exactly the pixel they clicked. Paint's single-pixel mode is the correct default for icon work; the averaged modes are appropriate when the source is photographic and the colors are continuous.

The layer-aware sampling in GIMP, Photoshop, Krita, and Paint.NET allows sampling from a specific layer of a multi-layer document. Modern Paint (Windows 11) added layer support in 2023 and may add layer-aware sampling in a future build; as of the 2026 builds the Eyedropper samples the composite result of all layers rather than any individual layer.

The screen-wide sampling in GIMP, Photoshop, and Krita allows the Eyedropper to sample any pixel on the screen, not only those within the editor's canvas. Paint does not support this feature; the workaround is documented in the advanced considerations section below.

Decision flowchart for sampling

Eyedropper usage statistics

The chart below summarizes the share of Eyedropper-related actions during a typical icon-authoring session, based on the 57 Studios contributor questionnaire conducted in early 2026.

The chart shows that palette-consistency sampling dominates: the contributor uses the Eyedropper to re-sample colors throughout a session to ensure that every pixel placement uses the canonical palette color rather than a memory-based approximation. The matching-across-icons category is the second-largest because contributors frequently move between in-progress icons in a pack and sample between them. The drift-correction and palette-extraction categories are smaller but still meaningful.

Did you know?

The Eyedropper's share of total tool clicks (18 percent) is approximately half the share of palette-consistency actions in the chart above (45 percent of Eyedropper actions, which is 8 percent of total clicks). The remaining Eyedropper actions are amortized across the other categories. The numbers are consistent across the three years of the 57 Studios contributor questionnaire.

Advanced considerations

Temporary Eyedropper while another tool is active

In many editors, holding Alt while a drawing tool is active temporarily activates the Eyedropper. Microsoft Paint does not implement this shortcut. You must explicitly press K to switch to the Color picker, then P to return to the Pencil. The two-keystroke cycle is fast enough for routine work but slower than the single-key hold in GIMP or Photoshop.

The absence of the temporary-Eyedropper shortcut is the single largest workflow gap between Paint and the more sophisticated editors for icon authoring. Senior contributors compensate by treating the K-P cycle as a single ingrained pattern rather than as two distinct actions. The result is that the cost of the explicit cycle is small in absolute terms, although it remains slower than the alt-hold pattern.

Pro tip

For users transitioning from Photoshop or GIMP, the K-P pattern is the most important new habit to develop. The pattern is initially awkward but becomes automatic within a few sessions. Resist the temptation to keep alt-hold expectations active; the muscle memory will fight the new pattern if both are attempted simultaneously.

Sampling outside the canvas

Paint cannot sample from arbitrary pixels on the desktop. To capture a color from a web page or another application, take a screenshot with Windows + Shift + S (Snipping Tool), paste it into Paint with Ctrl + V, then sample from the pasted image.

The workaround introduces an extra step compared to editors with screen-wide sampling, but it is reliable. The pasted screenshot becomes a region of the Paint canvas that can be sampled like any other region. After the sampling is complete, the screenshot can be deleted with the selection tool and the Delete key, leaving the original canvas intact.

For workflows that involve frequent screen-wide sampling, the right tool is not Paint. GIMP and Krita both have screen-wide sampling built in and are appropriate substitutes for the screen-sampling steps of a workflow. Paint can still be used for the final icon authoring after the screen samples have been captured.

Sub-pixel sampling

Because the Pencil paints a single discrete pixel, sub-pixel sampling has no meaning in Paint. Each pixel has one RGB triple and the Eyedropper returns it exactly.

The constraint is appropriate for pixel art and is a feature, not a limitation. Editors that support sub-pixel sampling for continuous-tone work also produce slightly fuzzy edges when the user expects pixel-exact behavior. Paint's commitment to discrete pixels carries through the entire workflow: discrete sampling by the Eyedropper, discrete placement by the Pencil, discrete edges in the saved PNG.

Sampling on a high-DPI display

On a high-DPI display with Windows display scaling enabled, the cursor's position in screen pixels does not directly correspond to canvas pixels at standard zoom levels. The Eyedropper still samples the correct canvas pixel, but the user may have difficulty positioning the cursor at the intended pixel. The corrective practice is to zoom in past 400 percent before sampling; at high zoom the cursor's targeting is unambiguous regardless of the display scaling.

Sampling from a paste region

When an image is pasted into Paint via Ctrl + V, the pasted region appears as a movable selection floating above the canvas. The Eyedropper can sample from the floating selection before it is committed to the canvas. The pattern is useful for extracting colors from a reference image without committing the reference to the working canvas.

The pattern:

1. Copy the reference image into the clipboard (Ctrl + C from any source).
2. Press Ctrl + V to paste into Paint as a floating selection.
3. Press K to activate the Eyedropper.
4. Click the floating selection to sample colors.
5. Press Esc or click outside to dismiss the paste without committing it.

The pattern preserves the original canvas state while still enabling sampling from the reference.

FAQ

Why doesn't right-click sample into a third color? Paint only has two color slots: Color 1 and Color 2. Right-click is mapped to Color 2 by design.

Can I see the hex code of a sampled color? Yes, but not in the slot itself. After sampling, click Edit colors in the Colors group. The current Color 1 value appears with sliders and a Hex field below the Red, Green, and Blue boxes (Hex display is available in modern Windows 11 builds).

The Eyedropper sampled a slightly wrong color. Why? You sampled an anti-aliased edge pixel rather than the solid interior. Zoom in further before sampling. See How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing.

Does the Eyedropper work on transparent areas? Paint historically had limited transparency support. In modern Windows 11 builds, sampling a transparent pixel returns the canvas background color, which is typically white.

Is there a keyboard shortcut to toggle between Color 1 and Color 2? No. You must click the slot you want to make active before sampling, or use right-click to sample directly into Color 2.

Can I sample multiple colors in a row? Yes. The Eyedropper remains active after each sample. Continue clicking to sample each new color into the appropriate slot. Switch slots between samples by clicking the slot indicator at the top of the Home tab.

What happens if I click a pixel outside the canvas with the Eyedropper? The Eyedropper ignores the click. The active color slot is not changed.

Can I sample colors from a PDF file? No, not directly. Convert the PDF to an image first (PowerShell, ImageMagick, or any PDF-to-PNG converter), then open the image in Paint and sample normally.

Does the Eyedropper respect Paint's zoom level? Yes. The Eyedropper samples the canvas pixel that the cursor is currently over, regardless of how many screen pixels that canvas pixel occupies at the current zoom level.

Can I sample from a Paint window that is not the active window? No. The Eyedropper samples only from the canvas of the active Paint window. To sample from a different file, switch to that file's window first.

Why does the sampled color sometimes look different from the source pixel? Several possible causes: the sampled pixel was anti-aliased and you sampled an edge rather than the interior; the display has color management that differs between source and destination; the source image has an embedded color profile that Paint does not apply. The most common cause is the first; verify by zooming in past 800 percent and sampling the same pixel again.

Can I use the Eyedropper to identify the exact color of a pixel without changing my color slots? No. The Eyedropper always writes to a color slot. To inspect without changing, save the current Color 1 and Color 2 values first (note the hex codes via Edit colors), sample, read the new value, and then restore the original colors if desired.

Does the Eyedropper work on a touch screen? Yes. Tap to sample into Color 1; press and hold to sample into Color 2. The press-and-hold gesture is the touchscreen equivalent of right-click.

Can I sample colors from a video paused in Paint? Paint does not open video files directly. The workaround is to pause the video in a video player, take a screenshot with Windows + Shift + S, paste into Paint, and sample from the pasted screenshot.

Best practices

• Press K, sample, then press P to draw. Two keystrokes; muscle memory in a day.
• Use right-click sampling when two colors will be needed in alternation.
• Build a small palette strip in the corner of every multi-asset project as a sampling reference for future sessions.
• After sampling a critical color, immediately open Edit colors and write down the hex code. This protects against accidental loss when Paint closes.
• Use averaged sampling in GIMP or Photoshop when the reference is a high-resolution photograph rather than a pixel-art source.
• Maintain a canonical palette file for every multi-icon pack and sample from it rather than from sibling icons.
• Verify the sampled color by reading the slot indicator before painting.
• Zoom in past 400 percent before sampling to avoid edge-pixel errors.
• For brand-consistent series, sample from a brand palette file at the start of every new pack.
• Treat the Eyedropper as a passive reader of the canvas; it never modifies pixels.

Workflow: palette extraction from a complex reference

The workflow below illustrates how the Eyedropper is used to extract a complete palette from a complex reference image. The example uses a high-resolution screenshot from an existing Unturned mod as the reference.

Step	Action	Notes
1	Open the reference image in Paint	Or paste from clipboard
2	Zoom to a level where individual color regions are visible	Typically 200 percent for screenshots
3	Identify the prominent color regions visually	Mental inventory of the palette
4	Create a small palette strip area in the corner of the canvas	Reserve a 16x4 pixel region
5	Press K, sample the first prominent color	Color 1 set
6	Press P, place the sample in the palette strip	First swatch
7	Repeat steps 5-6 for each unique color	Build the strip
8	Verify the strip captures the visible palette	Compare against the reference
9	Add any missing colors with additional sampling	Complete the palette
10	Save the file as a palette reference	New file separate from the reference

The workflow's output is a small file containing the full palette of the reference image as a sampleable strip. The file becomes the canonical palette for any new icon work that should match the reference's visual style. The pattern is the documented practice of contributors producing fan-style packs for existing Unturned mods.

Best practice

The palette strip should be stored in a separate file rather than in the corner of every working icon. The separation keeps each working icon clean and makes the palette strip available to multiple icons simultaneously via multiple Paint windows.

Working with the Eyedropper at scale

For workflows involving very large numbers of icons (dozens or hundreds in a single pack), the Eyedropper's role expands beyond per-icon color matching to include pack-wide palette discipline. The patterns below cover the documented techniques for scale work.

Pattern 1: Single canonical palette file

The simplest pack-wide pattern is a single canonical palette file that contains every color used across the pack. Every icon in the pack samples from the canonical file rather than from sibling icons. The pattern guarantees that every pixel in every icon uses one of the documented palette colors.

The advantages: total palette consistency, single point of edit for palette adjustments, fast onboarding for new contributors who only need to memorize one file's location.

The constraint: the palette must be designed up front and rarely changes. Mid-project palette additions require updating the canonical file and potentially re-sampling existing icons.

Pattern 2: Per-category palette files

For packs with multiple visual categories (weapons, vehicles, equipment, structures), a per-category palette file allows different color sub-palettes for each category. Each icon samples from its category's palette file.

The advantages: category-specific palette design, smaller palettes per file (easier to navigate), category-specific brand consistency.

The constraint: increased file management overhead, risk of cross-category drift if contributors sample from the wrong file.

Pattern 3: Hierarchical palette files

For very large packs, a hierarchical palette structure includes a global palette (colors common to all categories), category palettes (colors specific to each category), and icon-specific palettes (colors used only in a single hero icon). Each icon samples from the appropriate level of the hierarchy.

The advantages: precise control over palette scope, support for both global consistency and per-icon flexibility.

The constraint: substantial file management overhead, requires documented conventions for which palette to sample from in which situation.

Did you know?

The hierarchical palette pattern is the documented practice of two of the largest Unturned mod studios. The pattern produces packs with notably consistent visual identity while still supporting per-icon distinctiveness for hero items. The pattern is also the most complex to maintain and is not recommended for contributors producing fewer than approximately fifty icons per pack.

Comparison: Eyedropper vs alternative color selection methods

The Eyedropper is not the only way to set a color slot. The alternatives are documented below for completeness.

Method	Speed	Precision	Use case
Eyedropper	Fast	Pixel-exact	Sample from existing source
Standard palette click	Fast	Approximate	Quick rough color choice
Edit colors panel	Slow	Hex-exact	Specific known hex value
Custom colors strip	Fast	Pixel-exact	Reuse session-stored color
Memory (typing hex)	Slow	Hex-exact	Recall a documented hex

The Eyedropper dominates when the source color is visible somewhere on the canvas. The Edit colors panel dominates when the source color is documented as a hex code but not visible on the canvas. The standard palette click is rarely the right choice for icon work because the palette colors are approximate and the resulting icons drift away from any documented palette.

The Custom colors strip is a hybrid: colors that were defined in a previous Edit colors session are stored in the strip and can be clicked directly. The strip is useful when a known palette has been pre-loaded for a session. The strip does not persist across sessions, so a session that depends on the strip must reload the palette at the start.

Common mistake

Relying on the standard palette click for icon work. The standard palette colors are approximate and produce icons that drift from any documented palette. The corrective practice is to use the Eyedropper for sampling, the Edit colors panel for hex entry, and the Custom colors strip for session-stored colors. The standard palette should be treated as a quick-rough-draft option only.

Cross-references

• How to Open Paint — the prerequisite reference for any Eyedropper work.
• How to Use the Pencil Tool — the companion tool that consumes the Eyedropper's output.
• How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing — required for accurate sampling at low canvas sizes.
• How to Set Canvas Size for Icons — the canvas configuration that the Eyedropper samples from.
• How to Save a PNG File in Paint — the export step that closes the icon authoring loop.
• Why Your PNG Has a White Background — diagnostic reference for transparent-pixel sampling concerns.

Appendix A: documented sampling mistakes and their corrections

Several sampling mistakes appear consistently among new icon authors. The list below covers the documented patterns.

Mistake: Sampling an antialiased edge pixel

The most common sampling mistake is to sample a pixel along the edge of a region rather than from the solid interior. The edge pixel's color is a blend between the region's interior color and the adjacent region's interior color, and the blend is not a useful palette color.

The corrective action is to sample from the interior of the region, not from the edge. Zoom in past 800 percent before sampling to verify the cursor is on an interior pixel.

Mistake: Sampling from a JPEG artifact

JPEG compression introduces color artifacts at the boundaries of high-contrast regions. A sample from a JPEG reference may capture an artifact color rather than the intended source color.

The corrective action is to convert the JPEG reference to PNG before sampling, or to sample multiple pixels from the apparent solid region and discard the outlier values.

Mistake: Sampling without verifying which slot will be affected

A sampling action always writes to one of the two color slots. If the wrong slot was active before the sample, the wrong slot is updated. The previous content of that slot is lost.

The corrective action is to verify the active slot before sampling. The active slot is highlighted in the toolbar.

Mistake: Sampling into Color 1 when Color 2 was intended

The most common slot-targeting mistake is to left-click for sampling when the intent was to sample into Color 2. The corrective action is to undo (Ctrl + Z) if possible, then re-sample with right-click.

Mistake: Sampling from the wrong reference

For contributors maintaining multiple Paint windows, the active window may not be the intended sampling source. The corrective action is to verify which window is active before sampling.

Mistake: Treating a sampled color as the documented palette value

A sample from a sibling icon captures whatever color was placed in that icon, not necessarily the documented palette value. If the sibling icon has drift, the sample inherits the drift.

The corrective action is to sample from the canonical palette file rather than from sibling icons whenever palette discipline is the goal.

Common mistake

Sampling from the wrong region of a reference image because the cursor was positioned by visual estimation at low zoom. At low zoom, individual pixels are difficult to target, and the sampled pixel may not be the visually intended pixel. Zoom in to at least 400 percent before any precision sampling.

Appendix B: Eyedropper interactions with Paint's modern features

The modern Windows 11 Paint added features that interact with the Eyedropper. The interactions are documented below.

Layer interaction

Modern Paint supports multiple layers. The Eyedropper samples the composite color at the clicked pixel, not the color of any individual layer. The behavior means that sampling above a partially-transparent layer returns the blended color of the layer stack rather than the layer's underlying color.

The corrective practice for layer-specific sampling is to temporarily hide all layers above the target layer, sample, then re-show the hidden layers.

Transparency interaction

Modern Paint supports a transparent canvas. Sampling a transparent pixel returns the canvas background color (typically white) rather than a meaningful color value. The Eyedropper does not distinguish between transparent and opaque pixels.

For icon work that involves transparency, the corrective practice is to sample only from opaque pixels and to verify the active layer's opacity before sampling.

Generative fill interaction

The 2024 Copilot integration includes a generative fill feature that produces continuous-tone output. The output is not pixel-art and is not appropriate for sampling into a pixel-art palette. The Eyedropper still works on the generated output, but the sampled colors will produce antialiased-looking results when placed with the Pencil.

The corrective practice is to disable the generative fill feature for pixel-art sessions and to limit sampling to manually-authored pixel-art sources.

Background removal interaction

The 2026 background removal feature converts a region to transparent. After removal, the Eyedropper samples the now-transparent region as if it were the canvas background. The pattern means that background-removed regions cannot be used as sampling sources for their original colors.

The corrective practice is to sample the original colors before applying background removal, or to undo the background removal before sampling.

Pro tip

For workflows that mix manual pixel-art authoring with modern Paint features, sample colors before applying any modern feature that may change pixel state. The pattern protects against unintended sample-state changes that the modern features can introduce.

Appendix C: long-form discussion of palette discipline

Palette discipline is the practice of using a deliberate, documented set of colors across an icon pack rather than choosing colors ad-hoc as the work progresses. The Eyedropper is the principal tool that enables palette discipline because it makes sampling from a documented palette as fast as guessing.

Why palette discipline matters

An icon pack with palette discipline reads as a cohesive set. Every icon shares visual cues with its siblings: the same metal-highlight color appears on every weapon, the same wood-shadow color appears on every wooden stock, the same fabric-mid-tone appears on every cloth wrap. The cohesion is part of what distinguishes a professional pack from a hobbyist collection.

An icon pack without palette discipline reads as a collection of unrelated icons. Each icon may be well-executed individually, but the absence of shared colors prevents the pack from reading as a unified set. The lack of cohesion limits the pack's perceived quality and its commercial appeal.

The role of the Eyedropper

Without the Eyedropper, palette discipline requires either memorizing the palette (unreliable) or typing hex codes for every color application (slow). The Eyedropper collapses both into a single click: sample from the documented palette, then paint. The pattern makes palette discipline as fast as ad-hoc color choice and removes the productivity penalty that would otherwise discourage discipline.

Establishing a palette

A documented palette begins with a deliberate palette-design step at the start of a pack. The contributor chooses the colors that will appear across the pack, paints them into a canonical palette file, and commits to sampling only from that file for the duration of the pack. The palette can be expanded mid-pack if necessary, but the expansion should be deliberate and the new colors added to the canonical file.

The palette design typically includes:

• Two to four neutral colors for shared elements (outlines, shadows, fabric).
• Three to five material-specific colors for each material type (metal, wood, leather, fabric, stone).
• One to three accent colors for pack-wide visual signatures.

The total palette size is typically twenty to forty colors for a small pack and forty to eighty colors for a large pack. Larger palettes are technically possible but become difficult to maintain discipline against.

Maintaining discipline

Palette discipline is maintained by sampling from the canonical file rather than from sibling icons. The pattern prevents drift accumulation: if sibling icons are the sampling source, small drift in each sibling propagates to its samplers, and the drift compounds across the pack. The canonical file does not drift, so its samplers do not drift.

The discipline is also maintained by periodic audit. The pack author opens the canonical file alongside a finished icon, samples each color from the icon, and verifies that each sample matches a palette color. Mismatches indicate drift and should be corrected with the Fill bucket as described in the palette-drift correction workflow.

Best practice

For any pack of more than twelve icons, schedule a mid-pack audit at approximately the halfway point. The audit catches drift before it has propagated to half the pack and reduces the total drift-correction effort by an estimated fifty percent compared to a single end-of-pack audit.

Appendix D: cross-session palette persistence

Paint does not persist color slot state across sessions in a way that survives every shutdown scenario. The user-settings file at %AppData%\Microsoft\Paint\settings.dat stores recent color information but is occasionally reset by Windows updates, by Paint reinstalls, and by corrupted-settings recovery actions. A session that depends on the color slots being preserved across the close-and-reopen cycle is vulnerable to all three reset events.

The corrective practice is to never rely on color slot persistence as the only mechanism for palette state. The recommended patterns are:

1. Painted palette strip in every working file. The strip is part of the canvas data and survives every closure scenario.
2. Canonical palette file maintained separately. The file is opened at the start of every session and the colors are re-sampled into the slots from the file.
3. Documented hex codes for critical colors. The hex codes survive any closure scenario and can be re-entered via Edit colors if the visual sampling sources are unavailable.

Senior contributors use a combination of all three patterns. The painted strip guarantees in-session continuity; the canonical file guarantees cross-session continuity; the documented hex codes guarantee recovery even if both the working file and the canonical file are lost.

Common mistake

Closing Paint at the end of a long session with the assumption that the color slots will be ready in the next session. The slots may or may not survive depending on the Paint version, the Windows update state, and any corruption events that have occurred. The corrective practice is to save a painted palette strip in every working file before closing.

Appendix E: sampling workflows for specific Unturned asset types

The Eyedropper's role differs across the principal categories of Unturned assets. The patterns below cover the documented workflows for each category.

Weapon icons

Weapon icons typically use a four-to-six-color palette per weapon: outline, metal highlight, metal mid-tone, metal shadow, and one or two wood or polymer colors for the stock. The Eyedropper workflow samples each color from a canonical weapon palette file at the start of each weapon icon and rarely returns to the file mid-icon.

The pattern is:

1. Open the canonical weapon palette.
2. Sample the outline color into Color 1.
3. Begin the silhouette work with the Pencil.
4. Return to the palette to sample the next color as needed.
5. Continue cycling between sampling and painting until the icon is complete.

The pattern produces weapon icons with consistent metal and stock colors across an entire pack of weapons. The pattern is the documented practice for every weapon pack reviewed in the 57 Studios contributor questionnaire.

Vehicle icons

Vehicle icons use a broader palette than weapon icons (typically eight to twelve colors per vehicle) because vehicles include painted surfaces, tires, glass, and chrome trim. The Eyedropper workflow samples more frequently and from a per-vehicle palette file that has been derived from the canonical vehicle palette.

The pattern adds a derivation step: for each vehicle, the contributor creates a per-vehicle palette by starting from the canonical vehicle palette and substituting the vehicle's specific body color. The derived palette is then used for the icon, ensuring that all of the non-body colors (tires, glass, chrome) match the canonical values while the body color matches the vehicle.

Equipment icons

Equipment icons (backpacks, vests, helmets) typically use leather, fabric, and metal in combination. The Eyedropper workflow samples from multiple sub-palettes within a single icon: the leather sub-palette for leather elements, the fabric sub-palette for fabric elements, and the metal sub-palette for hardware.

The pattern is more complex than the weapon or vehicle patterns because the same icon samples from multiple palette regions. The compensating advantage is that the resulting equipment icons read with strong material distinction, which is part of what makes professional equipment packs feel coherent.

Structure icons

Structure icons (small buildings, deployable shelters, fortifications) typically use a stone-and-wood palette with optional metal trim. The Eyedropper workflow is similar to the weapon pattern but with the addition of a stone sub-palette.

The structure-icon palette is the most stable across packs: stone and wood colors transfer well across visual styles, and most Unturned mods use approximately the same stone-and-wood palette regardless of the mod's broader visual identity. The pattern means that a contributor producing structure icons for multiple mods can often reuse a single canonical palette across all the work.

Did you know?

The 57 Studios contributor questionnaire reported that structure icon palettes are the most commonly reused across packs. Approximately seventy percent of contributors maintain a single stone-and-wood palette file that they sample from across all of their structure work, regardless of which mod the work is for. The reuse pattern is one of the documented mechanisms by which experienced contributors achieve higher per-icon production rates than new contributors.

Appendix F: troubleshooting Eyedropper-specific symptoms

Several symptoms can affect the Eyedropper specifically and are documented here for reference.

Symptom: The Eyedropper appears to do nothing when clicked

The most common cause is that the click occurred outside the canvas bounds. The Eyedropper ignores clicks outside the canvas. Verify the cursor position relative to the canvas edges before clicking.

The second most common cause is that the active color slot is already set to the color being sampled. The slot does change to the sampled value, but the change is invisible because the value was already there. Verify by checking the slot indicator after the sample.

Symptom: The Eyedropper samples the wrong color

The most common cause is sampling from an antialiased edge pixel. Zoom in past 800 percent and sample from the solid interior of the target region.

The second most common cause is a JPEG compression artifact in the source. Convert the source to PNG before sampling, or sample multiple pixels and discard outliers.

The third most common cause is a high-DPI display that distorts the cursor-to-canvas mapping. Verify the Windows display scaling setting and zoom in further before sampling.

Symptom: The Eyedropper writes to the wrong slot

The cause is that left-click writes to Color 1 and right-click writes to Color 2. Verify which mouse button was used. If the wrong button was used, undo with Ctrl + Z and re-sample with the correct button.

Symptom: The Eyedropper's sampled value differs from the source's expected value

The cause is usually that the source has an embedded color profile that Paint does not apply. The sampled value is the raw RGB triple at the pixel, not the color-managed value. For workflows that depend on color-managed accuracy, use a color-managed editor (Photoshop or Krita) for the sampling step.

Symptom: The cursor does not change to an eyedropper shape

The cause is that the Eyedropper is not actually active. Verify by checking the toolbar; the Eyedropper icon should be highlighted. If the toolbar shows a different active tool, press K to switch.

Common mistake

Concluding that the Eyedropper is broken when the symptom is actually a configuration issue (cursor outside canvas, slot mismatch, JPEG source, DPI scaling, color management). The Eyedropper itself is one of the most stable tools in Paint and is almost never the source of a symptom. The configuration around the Eyedropper is usually the issue.

Appendix G: hex code reference for common Unturned palette colors

The 57 Studios documentation project maintains a reference table of common hex codes that appear across many Unturned icon packs. The table is not authoritative for any specific pack but is useful as a starting point for new contributors who do not yet have a documented palette.

Color role	Typical hex code	Notes
Outline (warm objects)	#1a1410	Near-black with a warm tint
Outline (cool objects)	#101418	Near-black with a cool tint
Steel highlight	#b8c0c8	Cool light gray
Steel mid-tone	#787c84	Mid gray
Steel shadow	#383c40	Cool dark gray
Worn metal highlight	#a09080	Warm light brown-gray
Worn metal shadow	#403830	Warm dark brown-gray
Wood highlight (light)	#c8a878	Warm tan
Wood mid-tone (light)	#806040	Warm brown
Wood shadow (light)	#402818	Deep warm brown
Wood highlight (dark)	#704030	Reddish brown
Wood shadow (dark)	#281008	Very deep brown
Leather highlight	#806848	Warm tan-brown
Leather shadow	#302010	Deep warm brown
Cloth (gray)	#606060	Neutral gray
Cloth (military green)	#404830	Olive drab
Cloth (military tan)	#807060	Desert tan
Cloth (military brown)	#604030	Warm dark brown
Brass	#a08038	Warm yellow-brown
Copper	#a06030	Warm orange-brown
Polymer (black)	#181818	Near-black with neutral tint
Polymer (FDE)	#a89878	Flat dark earth
Glass highlight	#80a0c0	Cool blue tint
Glass shadow	#203040	Deep cool blue
Rust	#804020	Warm orange-brown
Wear (chipped paint)	#403028	Dark warm gray
Background (white)	#ffffff	Default canvas color
Background (transparent)	(alpha 0)	Modern Paint only

The table is a starting point only. Each pack should derive its own palette by sampling the table's colors, adjusting them as needed for the pack's visual identity, and documenting the adjusted values in the pack's canonical palette file. The pattern produces packs that share a family resemblance with the broader Unturned modding community while still expressing each pack's individual identity.

Pro tip

For a brand-new pack with no established palette, start by painting one swatch of each color in the table into a Paint canvas, then iterate on the swatches to match the pack's intended visual identity. The pattern provides a structured starting point that is much faster than designing a palette from scratch.

Appendix H: Eyedropper and color theory for pixel art

The Eyedropper's role in pixel art is closely tied to a few principles of color theory that the discipline depends on. The principles are documented below for reference.

Hue shifts in highlights and shadows

Continuous-tone painting typically uses pure value shifts for highlights and shadows: a lighter version of the base color for highlights, a darker version for shadows. Pixel art typically uses hue-shifted variants instead: a warmer or cooler hue at the same value for highlights, the opposite shift for shadows.

The hue shift produces more visually interesting icons because the eye perceives hue variation as additional information about the depicted material and lighting. A pure-value-shift palette reads as flat; a hue-shifted palette reads as having directional lighting and material variation.

The Eyedropper supports the hue-shift pattern by enabling the contributor to sample specific hue-shifted colors from a documented palette. The pattern is faster than computing the hue shift by hand for every new color application.

Limited palette philosophy

Pixel art typically uses small palettes (ten to forty colors) by deliberate choice rather than by hardware constraint. The limited palette forces the contributor to consider each color carefully and produces icons with strong visual cohesion.

The Eyedropper enables the limited-palette philosophy by making sampling from the documented palette as fast as choosing arbitrary colors. Without the Eyedropper, the productivity penalty of palette discipline would encourage contributors to fall back on ad-hoc color choice, which would expand the de facto palette and dilute the cohesion.

Color harmony across an icon pack

A coherent icon pack uses colors that harmonize across all of its icons. The harmony is achieved by deriving every icon's palette from a single source palette rather than by independent palette choices per icon.

The Eyedropper enables the pack-wide harmony by making per-icon sampling from the source palette as fast as per-icon palette choice. The pattern is the mechanism by which the limited-palette philosophy scales from per-icon to per-pack.

Saturation discipline

Pixel art typically uses moderate saturation rather than maximum saturation. Heavily saturated colors read as visually aggressive at small icon sizes and crowd out the detail of surrounding pixels. Moderately saturated colors read as more sophisticated and allow the icon's detail to read clearly.

The Eyedropper enables saturation discipline by sampling specific moderately-saturated values from a documented palette. Without the Eyedropper, the temptation to use the standard palette's high-saturation primaries would erode the pack's saturation discipline.

Did you know?

The 57 Studios contributor questionnaire asked contributors to name the single most important color theory principle for icon work. The most common answer was "use moderate saturation." The Eyedropper-and-palette-discipline workflow is the mechanism by which the principle is operationalized in practice.

Appendix I: a working session example with the Eyedropper

The example session below illustrates the Eyedropper's role across a typical fifty-minute icon authoring session, complementing the working session example in the Pencil tool reference.

Time	Action	Eyedropper involvement
00:00	Open Paint, set canvas, zoom to 800%	None
00:01	Open canonical palette file alongside working canvas	Reference loaded
00:02	Press K, sample outline color from palette into Color 1	Sample 1
00:03	Press P, begin silhouette work	None
00:08	Press K, sample shadow color into Color 2	Sample 2
00:09	Press P, continue silhouette with both colors	None
00:14	Press K, switch Color 1 to base interior	Sample 3
00:15	Press F, fill interior	None
00:16	Press P, return to detail work	None
00:18	Press K, sample metal highlight	Sample 4
00:19	Press P, place highlights	None
00:22	Press K, sample metal mid-tone	Sample 5
00:23	Press P, place mid-tone band	None
00:26	Press K, sample metal shadow	Sample 6
00:27	Press P, place shadows	None
00:30	Verify at 100% zoom	None
00:32	Press K, sample accent color	Sample 7
00:33	Press P, place accent pixels	None
00:35	Press K, sample for drift correction on existing pixel	Sample 8
00:36	Press F, correct the drift region	None
00:37	Return to detail work	None
00:42	Final review at 100% zoom	None
00:45	Final adjustments	None
00:47	Press Ctrl + S to save	None

The session contains eight discrete Eyedropper samples across the fifty minutes, which is the typical sample-density for an icon with a six-to-eight-color palette. Each sample takes one to two seconds. The total Eyedropper time across the session is approximately fifteen seconds, but the cumulative value of the eight samples is much higher than fifteen seconds because each sample guarantees palette consistency for the dozens of pixels that follow it.

Best practice

A session that samples fewer than four to six colors from the canonical palette is likely operating outside palette discipline. The corrective action is to verify that the documented palette is in use and that the colors being placed are not memory-based approximations. The Eyedropper is the verification mechanism: sampling a placed pixel and comparing to the canonical palette confirms whether the placement was disciplined.

Appendix J: keyboard shortcut reference for Eyedropper workflows

The Eyedropper interacts with several keyboard shortcuts that an icon author benefits from memorizing. The shortcuts below cover the relevant operations.

Shortcut	Action	Notes
K	Activate Eyedropper	Universal selection
P	Return to Pencil	The companion shortcut
F	Switch to Fill	For drift correction
Ctrl + Z	Undo	If wrong slot was sampled
Ctrl + scroll	Zoom in / out	For precision sampling
Click slot indicator	Activate Color 1 or Color 2	Visual confirmation
Edit colors button	Open color editor	Hex code entry
Custom colors strip	Quick re-application	Within-session palette

The K-P-K-P cycling pattern is the foundation of fast sampling. The pattern is initially counterintuitive for users accustomed to alt-hold sampling in other editors but becomes automatic within a few sessions. The K shortcut is sufficiently central to professional icon authoring that several contributors have remapped the key to a more accessible position on custom keyboards.

Pro tip

For users with programmable keyboards, consider mapping the K shortcut to a thumb-key position. The pattern reduces the cost of every sampling action by avoiding the index-finger reach to K. The improvement is small per action but compounds across the dozens of samples in a session.

Next steps

The Eyedropper samples the pixel directly under the cursor, but at default zoom levels individual pixels are difficult to see and even harder to click accurately. The next reference page covers zoom controls. Continue to How to Zoom In for Pixel-Level Editing.

Document history

Version	Date	Author	Notes
1.0	2025-11-12	57 Studios	Initial publication. Selection, sampling, and starter workflows.
1.1	2025-12-04	57 Studios	Added cross-editor comparison and decision flowchart.
1.2	2026-01-09	57 Studios	Added advanced considerations and screen-sampling workaround.
2.0	2026-05-17	57 Studios	Major revision. Added two-color sampling, brand-consistency pattern, palette-discipline discussion, modern Paint feature interactions, documented mistakes, scale workflows, and three appendix sections.