ColorSnapper 2
Get rid of those inconsistent blues with this colour picking app
£7.99 Developer Alexander Danmayer, colorsnapper.com
Requires OS X 10.9 or higher
ColorSnapper 2 is essentially a glorified eye dropper that sits in the menu bar and lets you sample colours from any app or image on screen to use in other contexts. Simply pick your chosen colour with the magnifier and it either gives you values as a handy overlay or saves it to a pop-up palette, where you can choose how to use your selected colour; colours can be exported in various formats, from hex values for coding to RGB values for CSS, or sent straight to Illustrator or Photoshop.
The main new feature in this version is Hi-Precision mode which enables sampling at a zoomed-in, pixel-perfect level. Hold ≈ while picking your colour and it drills right down to the finest detail, which is great on Retina displays (but just as useful on standard resolutions), as it slows the cursor speed down to ensure ultimate accuracy.
Once you have selected a colour, the main palette disappears, which is great for discretion. However, collecting a suite of colours in one go can be frustrating, as you have to recall the palette every time.
Commonly-used colours can be saved using the favourites function or tweaked using the Colour Spectrum options. Apart from your favourites, there’s no way to collect groups of colours together (for example, to create a colour scheme) in the way you might in Photoshop or Illustrator, so ColorSnapper does not completely replace some of these apps’ functions.
In terms of the app’s accuracy, colours are converted from your monitor profile to sRGB for consistency, and we noticed no obvious colour shift during our tests – colours selected retained the values we expected. Alex Thomas
An easy-to-use yet incredibly versatile tool for sampling colours. An essential addition to any digital designer’s toolkit.
Hi-precision mode for extra accuracy
Can be used with any Mac app
Export colours in various formats
Limited saving and filtering options