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Often we see a photograph, a flower, leaf or other image that has breathtaking colors. We often want to try to recreate those colors, but never seem to quite get it right. The two images shown here are of leaves I picked up from my yard. The first one is a straight scan of the leaves. The second one has the individual colors in the images selected. I often use my computer to find the colors in an image such as this and then work with those colors in a quilt project. This is how I do it:

1. I use Adobe Photoshop and scan the image at a very low resolution. When you choose the scanner, it will let you specify how many dots per inch (dpi) the resolution will be. When I want to see individual squares of colors I set the dpi to a very low number. The photo shown here was scanned at 8 dpi.
2. Next working in photoshop and using the eye-dropper tool, I select a color from one of the squares.
3. I then make a selection box below the image and fill that selection with the color. To do this, you go under "edit", then "fill" and then select "foreground color."
4. I continue making boxes and filling them with the colors in the image.
5. Finally I rearrange the boxes in a graduated order.