Color picker should pick real color instead of mixing it with a texture's alpha

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1

sample black

As you can see, trying to sample a color from a transparent texture, at a spot where the color isn’t 100% opaque, results in the color picker choosing a color that is too dark to be used.
Same happens when trying to pick the color on a character (imagehosted here: sample-black2 — ImgBB)

In this case I am using an alpha texture with a multiplication node ontop of a base skin texture, to add details such as the skin darkening here. As you can see, Blender’s picker doesn’t realize this: wherever the alpha texture ends, it picks up pitch black – not nothing, not the color of the multiplication layer, not the color resulting from the combination of the two layers, which, because of the multiplication node, is a lot different. It would be an extremely practical feature to enable picker settings like “pick globally/pick active layer only”, and not let alpha affect the value when picking from a semi-transparent color, as in the first gif.

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It’s picking what’s displayed on the screen. That’s how eyedropper tools normally work.

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compare this to a tool like Photoshop, where when you pick a color from a layer,with nothing but alpha underneath, will give you the exact hue and value you need, no black mixed in.

The marching ants in the image editor in the picture above show that Blender understands quite well that this is not supposed to be black, but transparent. Yet the color picker doesn’t.

This makes texturing with layers set to multiply and arduous task, as the color picker fails to pick up the true color.