You're most likely to encounter SketchUp's color picker when you apply materials to a model. (However, you do find the color picker elsewhere, such as when selecting a color for text.) This article explains how to use the color picker for your current operating system. To select a color, you can choose from the following different methods:

SketchUp’s Match Photo feature has inspired many happy dances, because it enables you to

Have you ever stuck a decal on a window or a wall? In SketchUp, sticking an image on a face is even easier than those decals, because digital images don't wrinkle or trap air bubbles. Technically speaking, SketchUp enables you to import images that are already on your hard drive. When you import images from your hard drive (select File > Import to see the Open dialog box, shown in the figure), you can import the image as an image, a texture, or a matched photo.

To add detail and realism to your models, SketchUp enables you to paint materials on faces. Materials are essentially paints that have a color and optional texture (defined within an image file). For example, in the following figure, the roofing material has a blue color and a texture that simulates metal roofing. The siding and grass are also materials that have a color and texture.

With colors, textures, and photos, you can add details that make a 3D model look realistic and complete: Colors are like paint. Textures add realistic materials, such as carpet, tile, grass, wood, glass, and anything else you can capture as a digital image. Photos can be pinned to your model (or just a face within it). In SketchUp’s Materials panel (Microsoft Windows) or Colors panel (macOS), you find predefined colors and textures, which you can edit. Or try mixing your own colors or creating a texture from a photo.

Not all styles work well with SketchUp's default settings for selection colors or the display of hidden geometry, section planes and cuts, guides, and more. If you are color blind, changing these settings can also help you see SketchUp's modeling cues more clearly than you can with the default settings. In the Styles panel, the Edit tab has a Modeling Settings pane, shown in the following figure. Here you can customize colored visual cues and choose what cues, such as section planes, do or don't appear. You can save these selections with the active style.

SketchUp Styles can add complexity to a model that slow down SketchUp as you work on your 3D model. To apply the styles you need while optimizing performance, use Fast Style. When a style qualifies as a Fast Style, SketchUp displays a badge like this: If you apply a style created in SketchUp 2014 or earlier, the Fast Style doesn't display the badge until you force the style to update once in SketchUp.

In SketchUp, collections help you organize styles and easily access the ones you use most often. SketchUp includes several default collections, but you can create your own and save collections to a favorites list. The In Model styles collection is particularly helpful, because it contains all the styles currently included with your model file. To see your In Model styles, follow these steps:

In SketchUp, you can create and edit styles so that you can apply your preferred style settings with a single click. Tip: If you want to develop a sketchy edges style, check out Style Builder. To create a new style, follow these steps:

A big part of your model's style is what you see in the background. SketchUp makes it easy to customize the background including the sky, horizon, and ground to best fit the style of your model. After all, what's the use in making a Mars Rover if it doesn't look like it's on Mars? You can customize the background colors of your model in the Styles panel by following these steps: