I had no idea that Color Picker was so useful!
Colour software and websites
LaurenMarie from Creative Curio wrote a great article about color inspiration. After that I had a look around for a good website or program that could store your colour1 palettes and inspiration images.
- I have used kuler a bit. It’s nice, but I don’t love the flash interface. It also doesn’t have an inspiration section.
- Color Hunter is a pretty cool site. You can upload images and it automatically generates a colour scheme. However, you can’t seem to save it unless the image is from Flickr. Weird!
- COLOURlovers is definitely getting up there in practicality. You can upload an image and pick colours from it; you can save and publish colour palettes; there’s a pattern tool and you can link to inspiration websites and images. I found the interface a little confusing at first, but it doesn’t take too long to get the hang of it.
- Colorate is the only (freeware/donationware/open source) desktop software for Mac that seemed to be getting close to what I wanted to do. However, from my brief play it doesn’t suit. It only chooses one predominant colour from an image, then creates a homologous or contrasting scheme to go with it.
- Color Combos was a site that I had already bookmarked, but haven’t used because I have no idea how to save the colour schemes you can create.
- ColorSchemer is another one I’d already come across. It looks like what I’m looking for – if my software budget were higher I would give it a go.
I didn’t find exactly what I wanted and let go of the idea for a while. I started making a mobile phone theme yesterday and decided I need a little colour assistance. So, I rejuvenated my search and found an article about using the Mac OS X Color Picker.
Color Picker
It turns out that you can pick colours from images, drag them into the swatch bar, adjust the colours using sliders and save the colours in a list (which can act as palette or colour scheme).
By installing the HexColorPicker you can retrieve the hex values for your colours.
Traditionally Color Picker is a system utility used by other programs, but by using an AppleScript you can start Color Picker as easily as any program.
It even saves your inspiration images along with your colours in Library>Colors!
A more versatile storage system and user interface using Color Picker is a good software idea. Anyone know Cocoa?
1 I prefer the british spelling colour, but I’ve used the spelling color for website and software names.
Thanks for the link 🙂 I wish I could say more, but I own a PC! I don’t think there is a program like color picker for Windows.
Oh, and your little note at the bottom with the alternate spelling of color will help with SEO 🙂 If people are searching for “color” or “colour” your article will come up (though it may be waaaaay in the back somewhere!)
Erm, did you forget to close your em tag up there in the post? My comment is in italics…
We need a colourlovers.com ColorPicker in Mac OS X, like http://www.lithoglyph.com/mondrianum have for kuler.
Lauren, you really need to switch especially when you are so interested in typefaces. 🙂
Kristarella its a good all round article and Hex ColorPicker is the most wonderfull “patch” for Mac OS X, can’t believe they left it out.
LaurenMarie – sorry I didn’t reply sooner… I didn’t see your edited comment, just the first version!
Heh, I didn’t think of my little disclaimer that way, but I guess you’re right. 😉 Yes, I did forget to end the italics, how silly of me – I did notice that your name was in italics and I thought “Hmm, I’m doing a bit of italics for my new design, I didn’t think this one had any!”
Esben – Thanks for your comment, and welcome! Yes, I’ve found the hex values to be invaluable this week.
Wow! I hadn’t seen Mondrianum. One for ColourLovers would be cool, but even that one looks good (I have a kuler account). I hope they come out with a Tiger version to play with.
Hey Kristarella,
Well I just wrote the developers about the possibility, to include CL, because like you, I don’t use kuler one bit. kuler is btw a “rip off” of CL..
Mondrianum is a limted beta so i guess they are gonna charge a arm and a leg. But im trying to get someone to make this ColorPicker, because im in desperate in need of it.
Mondrianum is actually the first “app.” where CoverFlow is a usability 🙂
You might also check out a Color Picker plugin called “Painter’s Picker”. it includes a lot of things such as various color wheels, and automatic display of complementary colors using a whole bunch of different schemes. Very nice. (It is a paid product, but I thought it was worth it even though I’m not a designer. Or maybe that’s _because_ I’m not a designer?)
Thanks Stephen, that looks cool. I’m not sure if I’ll buy it, but definitely worth a try!
Haha, if you were a designer then maybe you would invest in the Pantone system or something (tools of the trade)? For us plebs, these tools are great.
hey! this really helped me out! thanks!
Thanks Matt!
Didn’t see this mentioned:
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp
I adore.