Hm… Digital Color Meter lives in /Applications/Utilities and works pretty much the same way. Cmd-Shift-C to copy to clipboard.
EDIT: Also, DCM lets you adjust the size of the loupe, which is handy for getting the aggregate when there's a slight variation in pixels (grain textures and the like)
Cool little utility, but €3.99 works out to US$5.50 for me. OS X includes the DigitalColor Meter app by default, which -- as far as I can tell -- has most of the functionality shown here. From what I can tell, the advantages include a global keyboard shortcut and a menubar item, rather than an app window. Can you tell us if there is any other significant difference?
#3 is allowed by DCM. Besides #2 and #6, all of those other features could probably be layered onto DCM with FastScripts (free for up to 10 global hotkeys, http://www.red-sweater.com/fastscripts/) and some trivial little AppleScripts, certainly nothing that couldn't be done in half an hour by anybody reading this site.
I think $5.50 is overkill for a system utility with some trivial extra shortcuts and visual enhancements.
EDIT: re #3, you can change the magnification of the loupe, not its literal size on the screen.
$5.50 is the price of 2 coffees, or one beer. If you use it all the time, a simple app is certainly worth that kind of money. If you dump it in a drawer somewhere to collect dust, maybe not.
By the size of the loupe I meant the size of the loupe, not the size of the aperture used to grab the colors. That's one thing DCM can do that CS can't.
As for the others, #2 is probably the most important of all for me, and would be hard to hack on top.
Even if it were possible, my time is worth more than $10 an hour, so I'll spend $5 to avoid a half hour of work hacking together some Applescripts.
It's only "wasted" time if you didn't learn anything while hacking it together, didn't have any fun, and gained nothing in redesigning it your way. But, to each his own...
Re: the loupe, yeah not sure exactly what you meant, but you can also change the magnification in DCM prefs.
You can set a global shortcut for anything with a number of apps, including the free and excellent (but more or less abandonware at this point) Quicksilver.
Sadly, custom triggers seem to not work in Quicksilver on Snow Leopard. One can create a shortcut hotkey and check some options, but the UI fails when one tries to define the Action.
Since when did os x have this? I've been using hacks to get the color picker to show up as an app for a very long time. This is an amazing find for me right now, thanks
Look for an app named 'DigitalColor Meter' under Applications/Utilities. Not that I'd discourage you from buying this particular utility. It looks very well done.
On a related note, for anyone using TextMate, try hitting Cmd-Shift-C while editing css. It will popup a color picker right there for you. Really handy.
I tried Colors for a while (and Pochade, and others), and the part they all suck at is the loupe. They all use that horrible, tiny, OS X default color picker. It barely magnifies things at all, and half the time the mouse pointer is still inside which makes it even harder to use.
This app's loupe is pointer-free and customizably large. It's fantastic!
I use it in conjunction with various plugins to said system color picker such as http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/ and http://lithoglyph.com/mondrianum/. It is very nice that the OS X system color picker supports adding plugins to /Library/ColorPickers because then you have support for new color picker panels in every program that uses the System Color Picker.
Yeah, bummer. I just contacted support about this. Apparently they gave Apple the fix last week but are waiting for them to approve the update. If you're interested in this, hold off for a couple of days.
Apple's wait time for bug fix approvals is annoying enough when it's a game for your phone. The fact that it can delay fixes for one's day-to-day working tools is completely unacceptable.
Off-topic (somewhat) but related to your Edit 2, anyone know if it's possible to disable the "install to dock" functionally of the App Store? I only have applications I want on the dock.
The biggest problem with the built in color meter, is that it puts the '#' in front of the hex color when copying to the keyboard. This makes it impossible to paste in applications that are expecting no more than 6 characters. e.g. #[______] then when you paste you get #[#28382]
I switched to colibri for this reason. Does this application suffer the same drawback?
Right now, yes. Myself and several others have tweeted at the developer about it, so hopefully they'll listen and add it. I can't imagine it would be difficult to add to the list of formats.
EDIT: Also, DCM lets you adjust the size of the loupe, which is handy for getting the aggregate when there's a slight variation in pixels (grain textures and the like)