How to properly select colors (newbie)

[williama97926157]

Hey Guys,

I have a plain white map with county lines pre-drawn. I'm working on a project where I color code counties with various colors whether they're existing business, 2018 growth opportunity, competitive business, etc. I started this project a few months ago on a free trial photoshop account and it worked great. I selected the color that I wanted in the upper left and then I used the "paint bucket" tool to drop a given color into the appropriate county.

I purchased a photoshop license today to start this project back up. However, regardless of whether I select light green, dark green, blue, yellow, or any other color, when I use the "paint bucket" to drop the color into a given county, it is now just showing up as a varying shade of grey.

Any ideas why this might be happening?

Thank you! I appreciate any assistance.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

Go Image > Mode from the menu bar.  Is it RGB 8 bit?

[williama97926157]

Thanks to both of you. I figured it was something simple.

If you're aware of a good way to get a "crash course" in photoshop, I would be very interested. I suspect I'm going to start using it a lot more on various projects in the coming months.

[D Fosse]

You have a grayscale file.

Image > Mode > RGB color.