Color Tools and Pixel Tools are purpose-built utilities designed to provide most of the functionality most Windows professionals need from color selection/management tools. Pixel Tools is a compact "pixel grabber" and screen ruler set designed primarily for fast access to the most commonly needed screen capture, measurement, magnification and color selection functions. Color Tools is a full-fledged color management utility with everything Pixel Tools has plus a whack of extra resources and features. Which is most worthy of a permanent place on your utilities menu depends on what you do and how you work

IMPORTANT NOTE: These programs should not be used while Media Center or a video capture device is running. If a problem occurs, press Ctril+Alt+Delete, select Color Tools/Pixel Tools and End Task to stop the odd behavior.

Pixel Tools is a tiny "pixel grabber", screen capture, set of screen rulers and "loupes" (magnifying glasses) for Windows professionals who need fast access to color values and object sizes in their work. It’s an enhanced stand-alone version of the "compact mode" Color Tools dialog. There are many similar tools, and Color Tools in compact mode does many of the same things, but this is an exceptionally small, fast and resource-stingy tool (uses a small fraction of Color Tools’ USER/GDI resources) with the configuration options we feel a tool of this type truly needs to be considered worthy of professional use: a pixel tracker for determining the color of screen pixels up to three three-mode "screen rulers" in both vertical and horizontal modes for measuring pixels, dots and logical units four-mode screen capture utilities full-featured screen "loupe" (magnifying glass) dialog enhanced launch control over Color Tools (run-on-Startup, minimize-to-tray and instance management) exceptionally low memory/resource consumption

Features of Pixel Tools On-demand run-on-Startup, close-on-Escape and minimize-to-tray for the ultimate in speed and convenience. Compact dialog mode reduces the display to a tiny fraction of the desktop, with two compact-mode display options for Pixel Tools and fully-definable compact-mode display components Copy color string in any of nine different formats, including HTML hexadecimal, HTML "named", decimal, RGB, C++, Visual Basic, Java, and two Object Pascal formats Built-in screen capture available in full-size (Color Tools), compact (both) and system-tray modes, and "screen loupe" with pixel focus bullseye. Intuitive design and comfortable layout with over three dozen user-definable options for tailoring the application to the way you work. Configure the menu, title bar, dialog font, and more to enhance comfort and efficiency Fully documented with complete helpfiles and extensive, informative "balloon help". Random color picker and instant access to the Windows color selector. Experiment with random colors or precisely modify the current color from Windows’ dialog On-demand horizontal and vertical "rulers" with three measurement options, and up to two additional stand-alone rulers each with their own orientation and units of measurement. When rulers are available, the main dialog is infinitely resizeable in the direction of the ruler. The rulers can be set to measure pixels, "dots" or logical units for optimal flexibility Full-featured stand-alone loupe dialog with screen capture to clipboard or disk, variable magnification and three "target" options. Tiny footprint, both in memory and on the desktop: shrinks as small as 150x60 pixels in size; uses only a tiny fraction of the system resources of comparable tools. An optional always-available third ruler on the main dialog with all the features of the stand-alone rulers. All commands tucked neatly into a single right-click context menu. Configure the menu, title bar, dialog font, and more to make the program work the way you work.

This tool, as with all Plain Brown Power utilities, both Color Tools and Pixel Tools have their limitations. Most of the known limitations in these tools are voluntary and deliberate. If there's a limitation here that significantly affects your decision about whether this tool deserves a permanent place in your toolkit, by all means let us know. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are features common to both Color Tools and Pixel Tools; all other features are exclusive to Color Tools.

Limitations to Color Tools/Pixel Tools basic functions

• *Instance management: There is usually no need to have multiple instances of the program running at one time, and the program typically will not allow multiple-instance operation. The same copy of the program cannot be run twice to create two running instances of the program. The only way to achieve this is to install two copies to the program, rename the executable file for the second copy, and assign a different application title to the second copy from the configuration dialog.
• *Hotkeys: At present, only 20 hotkey options are supported for the pixel tracker. We saw no practical need to support a full set of hotkey options.
• *CMY/CMYK/HSL/HSV: CMY/CMYK color conversion is currently not supported. Hue/ Saturation/ Luminance| Volume is currently not supported.
• *DirectX screen capture modes: DirectX video modes are currently supported only minimally, and no warranty is given that screen capture will function properly in any nonstandard Windows mode, although this function may work under some circumstances.

Pixel Tools version history

Package title	Color Tools	Pixel Tools
Version	1.10b	1.10b
Download file size(s)	624kb	481kb
Installer/uninstaller
Source code available	Yes	Yes
Win31/NT3.51-compatible	No	No
Win95/98/ME/XP-compatible
WinNT4/W2K/XP Pro-compatible
Copyright/distribution status	Donationware	Donationware

Color Tools and Pixel Tools are copyright ©2001-2002 Cub Lea. This software may not be redistributed except by the publisher or an exclusive licensee. Neither the archive, the installation, nor any files contained in the original archive as posted by the publisher may be modified in any fashion except where otherwise specified.

Trademarks? Are you kidding? I purposely chose the simplest, most generic names we could think of for Plain Brown Power software products. I'm a professional myself, and I don't believe that fancy names or expensive trademarks add a thing to the work environment. I've yet to meet a professional who did believe that...who wasn't a marketer or salesperson.

Posting and non-Internet publication permissions

Please do not post this software on other websites. The posting of a short-term release with problems which have since been fixed reflects badly on everyone, and that includes you as the host.

If you wish to link directly to the download archive, then don't even ask...you can't. Bypassing the license page is strictly forbidden.

CD/DVD publishers are not permitted to include this software on magazine disks, shareware CDs, etc. Since there is no simple way to do this and still retain my protection against unwanted legal action, I can't allow this software to be redistributed in any other way but on this site through the license pages.

Here's a small collection of links to related products and resources we recommend if our tools don't meet your needs. If our software can't solve your problems, then it's quite likely one of these links will provide what you need.