The magnifier provides a view of the area around a measurement tool. In addition, the color of the pixel at the center of the view is shown. There are three parts to the magnifier: the magnifier window, the color display, and the zoom and freeze controls.

The magnifier window displays the area around the current tool (e.g. cursor, crosshair) magnified by the current zoom factor. When the Cursor tool or Window tool is selected, the center of the magnifier is outlined by a red square that corresponds to the hotspot of the cursor. When a tool is selected that uses a crosshair, the red outline at the center of the magnifier corresponds to the center of the crosshair that is being positioned.

A grid is overlaid on the magnifier window when the zoom factor is 4X or greater. To turn off this grid select the Magnifier Grid item on the View menu.

The color of the pixel at the center of the magnifier window is shown below the magnifier window. The color is shown in the swatch at the right of the section and the color value is displayed on the left. The color value is reported in one of the following formats depending on the selection made on the Color Format submenu on the View menu.

• RGB - The color is displayed as separate red, green, and blue components each as a value between 0 and 255 inclusive.
• #RRGGBB - The color is displayed as a single six digit hexadecimal number where the first two digits are the red component, the next two digits are the green component and the last two digits are the blue component. The value of each component is between 0 and 0xFF inclusive.
• CMY - The color is displayed as separate cyan, magenta, and yellow components each as a value between 0 and 255 inclusive.
• CMYK - The color is displayed as separate cyan, magenta, yellow, and black components.
• HSL - The color is displayed as hue, saturation, and lightness values.
• YCbCr - The color is displayed as a luminance (Y) and two chrominance values (Cb and Cr).
• YIQ - The color is displayed as a luminance (Y) and two chrominance values (Inphase, Quadrature). This format corresponds to that used in television broadcasting.

At the bottom of the magnifier is the zoom slider. This control sets the magnification factor between 1X and 32X. The zoom can also be controlled using the Zoom In and Zoom Out menu items on the View menu or the Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- keyboard combinations. At 6X and above, a grid is overlaid on the magnifier window. To turn off this grid select the Magnifier Grid item on the View menu.

Next to the pixel color swatch is magnifier window freeze button. This button acts like the pause button on a VCR. Depressing the button will freeze the the current view in the magnifier window. Pressing the button again will cause the magnifier window to go live.