How to change the Photoshop Colour Picker

This morning Photoshop had spontaneously updated itself to a new version, thankfully with an updated Splash Screen that no longer featured an Amazon ad. I was happy about the retro car and the eighties background! I had some work to do so didn’t check out the new features just yet, hoping everything was going to work the same as before.

I wanted to adjust one of the blending options, expecting to see my old friend the colour picker as I had left him last time. This is what I normally use, letting me pick the right colour value and hue, as well as pure black and white with a single click:

To my surprise, what the new version of Photoshop gave me out of the box looked like this:

Perplexed and shocked I scoured the Settings and Preferences. There had to be a way to bring this thing back to what I’ve been used to for over 20 years. This newfangled thing looks psychadelic and all, but there’s no way I can pick colours with it. Oh sure I could type in a hex or RGB code, but dang – this is an “improvement” I didn’t need.

Turns out nothing has changed – it’s just that the colour picker was on the wrong mode. See that unsuspecting radial selection thing next to the letter H? Yeah, that needs to be ticked, otherwise you’re presented with a whole other kind of colour selection menu, for a whole other kind of industry (one that I admittedly didn’t know existed).

This was a wonderful tip from Jennifer Farley from Photoshop Bootcamp. Without you, I wouldn’t have made it through my Photoshop Day.

Thanks Jennifer!