How to Select Perfectly Matching Color Combinations - Mini-Guide, Part 12
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ColorSchemer Studio
ColorSchemer Studio is a color matching application that helps you explore color using a visual color wheel. You can mix colors, create gradients and analyze contrast and readability. A Mac OSX version is available.
You can take a Flash tour of the application [opens Flash file] and this matrix compares Color Schemer and Color Schemer Studio. Demos are available. Color Schemer ColorPix is a free Windows application that grabs a pixel and transforms it into different color formats.
Price: Color Schemer Studio (Win and OSX): USD $49.99. Color Scheme Studio OSX: USD $49.99. Color Schemer (Win only): USD $34.99. 15-day trial available. See the Web site for student and teacher discounts. Color Schemer ColorPix (free), Color Schemer Galleria (free) and Color Schemer Online (free).
ColorImpact
http://www.tigercolor.com/
Free to try
Meet the Rolls Royce of color matching tools.
ColorImpact is the best professional tool available for creating harmonious color schemes. It offers all of the best features from all of the other color matching tools available in one nice package. It's intuitive, reliable and full-featured.
With its highly visual user interface, ColorImpact brings effective color theory into action with a mouse click. The application is targeted to professional multimedia and Web designers, but novices and beginners can easily master it.
Many color formulas are already built-in and include triads, complements and analogous colors. You can design your own custom color formulas to explore advanced or alternative color combinations. You can export color schemes as Photoshop palettes, CSS files or the clipboard for pasting into your favorite design application.
ColorImpact offers many advanced features that will make any designer happy. These include:
a) The quality and variety of available interactive test patterns.
b) The "variation" palette feature for exploring variations of the current color palette. See how a color scheme looks when you make the colors lighter, brighter, darker, more saturated, less saturated, warmer or cooler.
c) The undo feature that can go back 100 steps.
d) Color Formula Editor for creating custom color combinations.
e) An integrated color picker for precise sampling of color references from images, Web pages and other documents.
The program includes many features for quick access from Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, FrontPage and other applications.
A feature tour is available at:
http://www.tigercolor.com/Features1.htm
You can download a 14-day free trial at:
http://www.tigercolor.com/Download.htm
Price: USD $49.95
Must have.
Color-Wheel-Pro
http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/
Free to try
When she couldn't find anything that met her needs, Nicole Ross designed Color Wheel Pro. It's an application for interactively creating various color schemes and previewing them on real-world examples like Web sites, product packaging and logos.
The preview occurs in real-time. When adjusting the color scheme, you immediately see your changes on the available samples.
The approach is the same one used on the Sessions.edu Color Calculator — an interactive color wheel providing access to mathematical color combinations. You can save and "preview" different color "presets" applied to the several sample designs.
Color Wheel Pro includes all the classic color schemes: Monochromatic, Analogous, Complementary, Split Complementary, Triadic, and Tetradic. It's also possible to create custom, or so-called "freeform" color schemes.
However, it's not possible to load your own designs and see the color combinations applied. Even though that would fantastic, the technical issues make it impossible.
The best thing in this tool is a well-written help file containing useful information about color and its characteristics. This alone justifies the price of Color Wheel Pro.
One area where Color Wheel Pro needs improvement is to let the user to easily view and export color codes and to enter them using numeric values, if needed. This is a useful and easy-to-use tool. Try it out by downloading a free 30-day evaluation at:
http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/
Price: USD $39.95
Recommended.
Sessions.edu - Color Calculator ***DEAD
***DEAD
This valuable and beautifully designed interactive Color Calculator helps you find perfect color combinations in a snap. A color wheel provides full color spectrum and several mathematical models to find the right color complements. Sample combinations are interactively displayed and RGB, CMYK and Hexadecimal codes for every color are available for exporting to other tools.
The Color Calculator is a great and easy-to-use tool that makes finding perfect color matches as easy as possible. It might be more difficult to decide which one of the infinite possible combinations you prefer.
The only weakness in this tool is that it doesn't allow directly entering a pre-selected color with specific RGB/CMYK/Hex codes. If you already have a precise color you want to start with, then this tool will be hard to use.
You're required to enter your name and email address to access the color calculator at http://www.sessions.edu/ilu/.
Price: Free
Highly recommended.
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Part 12: |
| 2009-10-09 03:50:50 |
Hi Robin! Im very thankful for all this info you provide. Its very helpful. Im looking forward for your next post.
| 2009-01-28 00:18:44 |
Hi Robin, I manufacture a color tool which I (humbly) think is the best there is. It has a full CMYK color wheel, a color map with hundreds of tints and variations, a color directory with "street" names for colors and cmyk formula, and finally an emotional color guide that shows the emotional impact of colors in the spectrum along with two, three and four color matching combinations. The tool is called the Galaxy Color Map Pro, and you can see an image of it here: http:www.galaxygauge.comcolor.html and if you look at the bottom of the description you can load a full-page image of it. Also, I think the price is right. Thanks for the excellent articles. I bought a Canon FS100 on the strength of your review, and it is a terrific camera.
| 2008-04-01 04:00:09 |
Hi Robin :-) Here are some more interesting color tools I am using for our prototypes: http:www.wellstyled.comtoolscolorscheme2index-en.html http:www.colorjack.comstudio# http:kuler.adobe.com And a color checker to see how disabled people look at your sites: http:www.vischeck.comvischeckvischeckURL.php Cheers, Giovani
| 2007-12-02 18:19:03 |
I have found the links in the article to be broken. Can someone advise me if the Andrew Mundi website is still active???
| 2007-05-18 10:23:05 |
Make color matching simple by using Tintbook. Predict CMYK color with confidence for your printing projects by using the pre-printed formulas that work with ALL graphic design software. Pages with vital color viewing and color management material are found throughout each volume. Graphic Designers and Printers are calling Tintbook a lifesaver. http://www.tintbooks.com
| 2007-03-26 01:20:45 |
Great article there Robin. Actually I have something to add to your findings ... One of the challenges I have with color-wheel based applications is that the generated colors are bright and outstanding. While that's great for highlights ... that's not so good for backgrounds and object coloring (where more natural colors please the eye more). If I may offer an alternative, one of my clients has developed a tool that tends to explore more mild, harmonious colors and palettes. And I think exploration of more "natural" alternatives is more useful for designers than color wheel suggestions. For color enthusiasts, the tool is free and available at http://www.genopal.com/online.htm thanks for listening to my rant ... hehe :)
| 2007-01-28 02:16:57 |
Hey gr8 info man... especially the sessions.edu was cool... I mean the second link
| 2007-01-22 01:45:53 |
i want a good tool for colour selection
| 2005-07-14 14:09:06 |
We created a website called ColorCombos.com (http://www.colorcombos.com) that your readers may find useful. Robert
| 2005-04-16 14:09:44 |
Hi, thanks for a nice article. I guess that the list "Bookmarks for web-developers" (http://www.alvit.de/vf/en/00_webtools.html) might be also interesting for web-designers, search for matching Color Combinations. With best regards, Vitaly Friedman, http://www.alvit.de/vf/
| 2004-12-10 06:00:43 |
I find this color tool very useful because I can cut and paste codes back and forth from PhotoShop. It has as many features as the paid ones.
| 2004-06-04 05:42:10 |
I have also found these two utilities very useful: -ColorSchemer -ColorShade They are not as full-featured as the mentioned programs but they are a lot easier to use and have some very cool features.
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