(HUD is short for “heads-up display.”) It’s also available in a variety of shapes and sizes (strip or wheel in small, medium, and large), and you can choose among ’em here. The HUD Color Picker setting refers to the on-image color picker you can summon when using a tool that paints, such as the Brush tool.

However, since the Adobe Color Picker is designed to work with Photoshop and all its built-in options, using another color picker may mean losing quick access to critical features like Color Libraries ( Loading Color Libraries). If you download and install third-party color pickers, they show up in this menu, too. If you’re more comfortable using your operating system’s color picker instead, you can choose it from the Color Picker drop-down menu. Unless you tell it otherwise, Photoshop displays the Adobe Color Picker (see Choosing Individual Colors) anytime you choose a color. It’s also a great way to bring an assistant or coworker up to speed on your workflow. This is an invaluable tool for folks who need to prove what they’ve done to an image in order to bill clients or produce legal documentation of all the edits they’ve made (think law enforcement professionals and criminal investigators). If you turn on History Log, Photoshop keeps track of everything you do to the document. Figure 1-12. The General preferences include the incredibly powerful History Log settings.