How to Pick a Color Sample in MS Paint
Use the MS Paint color picker to sample a color from logo artwork, read its RGB values, and know what a sampled color can and cannot tell you.
Contents
The short answer
Open the image in Paint and select the Color picker tool. Its icon is an eyedropper, and it sits in the Tools group on the Home tab or toolbar, depending on your version. Left-click a pixel to make that color your primary color (Color 1). Right-click to make it your secondary color (Color 2). To see the numeric value, open Edit colors. The dialog shows the color as RGB values, and newer versions of Paint also show a hex code.
Paint is a raster editor. It works with pixels, which are tiny squares of color, rather than with vector shapes. A vector shape is defined by mathematical paths and has a fill color assigned as a value. So in Paint you are sampling the color of one pixel, not reading a fill value that was set in the original logo file. This difference affects how much you can trust the result.
Step by step
- 1. Open the logo image in Paint.
- 2. Zoom in on the area you want to sample so you can see individual pixels.
- 3. Select the Color picker (eyedropper) tool.
- 4. Left-click inside a solid, flat area of the color. Do not click near an edge. The Color 1 swatch updates to the sampled color.
- 5. Open Edit colors with Color 1 selected and write down the RGB values, plus the hex code if your version shows one.
- 6. Repeat for each color in the logo. Right-click with the picker if you want to hold a second color in Color 2 for comparison.
How to check that you sampled the right color
Sample the same color area at several points well away from its edges and compare the values. If they match, you have most likely captured the intended flat color. If they differ, the image does not contain one clean color in that area, so treat any single reading as an approximation.
Two common causes of varying values in logo images are anti-aliasing and compression. Anti-aliasing is the blending of edge pixels with the background to make curves look smooth, so pixels near edges hold in-between colors. Lossy compression, such as in JPEG files, can add slight color noise across flat areas. Sampling from the interior of a large shape, in the cleanest and largest copy of the artwork you have, reduces both problems.
What a sampled color means for logo artwork
A value sampled in Paint is a screen color expressed in RGB. It reflects the pixel data in that specific image. It is not a documented brand specification, and it is not a print color such as a CMYK mix or a spot color reference. Use it as a working match for digital mockups or for rebuilding a logo as vector artwork. Before using it for final print delivery or a brand-critical job, check it against official brand guidelines or the original source file.
Sampling a color does not tell you whether a file is genuine vector artwork, whether it can be edited, or whether you are allowed to reuse the logo. A file extension does not prove any of those things either. Permission to use a logo comes from its owner, not from the file you happen to have.
Gaps in this guide
No version-specific documentation was supplied for this article. The exact location of the tool and the fields in the Edit colors dialog can vary between Paint releases. If your screen looks different, look for the eyedropper icon and the color editing dialog in your version's toolbar. No official brand color values were available to compare against, so the checks above confirm that your reading is consistent, not that it is correct for any particular brand.