Choosing a color scheme for your project can be one of the most difficult and most important decisions that you make during the design process. Within the last several years there have been quite a few advances in technology and resources related to this subject. This article is a roundup of some of the best new applications, resources, articles, and tutorials for choosing a color scheme for your project.
Color Scheme Articles & Tutorials
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Using Adobe Kuler to Enhance Your Photoshop Color Workflow
This article from Psdtuts+ covers Adobe Kuler, a handy, time-saving, and free application that can be used to generate color schemes for your designs.
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Color Theory 101
This four part series [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ] on Color Theory by Planet Photoshop is a great starting point for any designer who is looking to brush up on their knowledge of Color Theory. This article includes descriptions of color terms as well as techniques to utilize color in the most effective way.
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Creating a Color Scheme
This article from Chain Style is actually part article and part tutorial. It begins with a detailed overview of color harmony and then describes how to put those principles to use in Photoshop using various hues and saturation levels.
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Choosing Color Combinations
Having trouble devising a color scheme for your latest project? This article from Veerle offers some tips on choosing suitable colors, balancing color combinations, finding inspiration, and applying those principles to your work.
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How Color Choices in Stores Can Influence Your Shopping Decisions
Smart shoppers are not easily persuaded to purchase your products. In fact, retailers put a lot of thought into how the look of their packaging as well as how their products are organized on shelves. This article from the Shopping Journal discusses how color can affect your shopping decisions.
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Digital Color Mixing in Photoshop
When most of us think of mixing colors, we probably think about mixing cans of paint or colors on a canvas but did you know that you can also mix colors in Photoshop using the Photoshop brush engine? This article from Digital Artform describes various techniques for mixing colors in Photoshop.
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Color Aesthetics and Vocabulary
When working in Photoshop, it’s important to understand some of the terms that we come across every day. This article from Big Slick Design defines some widely used terms for describing color aesthetics.
Color Scheme Tools & Resources
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Colour Lovers
Colour Lovers is a web resource and community that monitors and influences color trends. On Colour Lovers you can also compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.
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Color Scheme Designer
Color Scheme Designer is a web hosted application that allows you to create your own color schemes. This application is great because it offers you several color options and will also suggest text colors. It even shows you an example of the colors applied to a generic website design.
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Color Explorer
Color Explorer is a powerful color scheme manager that allows you to easily create and explore color palettes for use in web design, desktop publishing, or any other graphic design process.
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Color Blender
Color Blender is a color scheme generator that allows you to generate a color scheme from any single color. After generating your color scheme you can then export that color scheme to either Photoshop or Illustrator.
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Color Palette Generator
Sometimes you may want to base a color scheme from an image that you are using in your project. The Color Palette Generator is a tool from CSS Drive that allows you to create a color palette from an uploaded image or URL.
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Color Combos
Color Combos is a library of color combinations that you can choose from. Each color scheme contains the HEX values that you can use in your graphics or website. Color Combos is a simple and convenient way to search for colors for your latest project.
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Color Jack
Color Jack is a fairly simple library of color schemes that you can select and then export to Photoshop or Illustrator. While Color Jack isn’t quite as advanced as some of the other color scheme generators it can be useful if all you’re looking for is a quick and easy color scheme to use in your project.
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Adobe Kuler
Adobe Kuler is a web hosted application for generating color themes that can be used in any project. No matter what you’re creating, Adobe Kuler can help you quickly experiment with color variations and browse thousands of themes from the Kuler community.
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Lots of material to learn…
Thanks
wonderful colorful post its really helpful for making good color
I could not imagine using a generator to pick my own colours. And colours has a ‘u’ in it firefox
… “Colour” v “Color” is purely a linguistic choice (GB v UK). If Firefox considers that you should write “colour”, then you have British English as default.
What’s wrong with using a generator? It’s not really a generator either, just a tool to help you make a better choice. Not like you hit a button and it gives out the best color scheme for a certain product.
Similar to how you couldn’t spell color without the u?
GREAT article.
Color Scheme Designer looks fabulous. Thanks a lot for this!
Thanks man…
I love colors
Wow, nice list!
Whoa! I didn’t know there was all this stuff for colors out there. Thanks, I’ll start using some of stuff right away. That color blender looks like it will really help!
thanks a lot for this stuff.
you know
picking colors was not that just easy,XD
salamat
Hey guys, there’s no other like Kuler..
Kuler for me is the best xD!!
But, yes of course this is a nice list!!
Thanks for share it!
very cool
A lot of things to do…!
I would love to see a tutorial on the methodology behind implementing a color scheme in a web design.
Another great resource
nice..
Thanks a lot !
I agree so much on the fact that colors are reaaaaally important.
Colors ftw.
Very helpful. Thanks!
Thanks for the info. Anyone knows about a color picker tool? a simple one (no full of options), on adobe air?
Thanks again!
Thanks for the article. Nice resource. Bookmarked!
Sweeeeeet.
what about http://www.colourlovers.com/
>:[}
very cool
Truly great post! I’m considering trying the Color Palette Generator software. I’m curious to know what will become of that.
sweet – i really have no excuses now for dull color schemes.
This is will be useful. Thanks.
i like color so much.i always stand out the color in my design.
i still use Adobe Kuler.. because i have never know the other Color tools……
thx man.now i have too many color tools ..
Some nice tips here! Among all the tools, Adobe Kuler is my fave.
Thanks for the tips! I have used some of these, but am looking forward to trying others. I just may find something to make the process easier.
That’s the most colorful post I’ve ever seen. Wonderful and useful! 1001 utilities =D! Thanks!
colour is teh bees knees.
thanks for the resources! =))
a lot of color here!
These are some really great colour resources. The Adobe Kuler is one of my favorites, but I have had a look at the Color Scheme Designer and it looks really easy to use. These resources can be helpful to people who find it hard to choose colours for their designs.
Wonderful collection!
Thank you for this nice links
Thanks for the sharing, picking color is really a hard job for beginning web designer like me.
Thanks, theres some great information there and at least 3 of the tools ive bookmarked.
big thanks for this great post.