Color Scheme Designer 3

August 26, 2011 12:13 AM

Color Scheme Designer 3 allows a user to create harmonious color schemes using their choice of one of six customizable combinations from the color wheel. There is an option to show what a given scheme would look like to users with various types of colorblindness. The resulting scheme can be exported in several formats including HTML+CSS and Photoshop ACO, and a given scheme can even be shared as a link.
posted by ob1quixote (18 comments total)

LOVE. Thanks!
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:30 AM on August 26, 2011

This is very cool.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:54 AM on August 26, 2011

Yes, very nice!
posted by maxwelton at 1:57 AM on August 26, 2011

This is very cool.

Sort of like what Flapjax said, only exactly.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:58 AM on August 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

Other useful color tools: Adobe's Kuler, Color Brewer 2, and 0to255.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 2:32 AM on August 26, 2011 [2 favorites]

Okay, that is awesome.
posted by cavalier at 2:44 AM on August 26, 2011

That's pretty fantastic, right there. Thanks!
posted by elfgirl at 3:41 AM on August 26, 2011

Back to the basics — two nicely illustrated articles from UX Matters: Color Theory for Digital Displays: A Quick Reference: Part I and Part 2.

(And if you can find it, the oldie but goodie Grumbacher Color Compass.)
posted by cenoxo at 3:45 AM on August 26, 2011

Thank you for posting this link.
posted by Sparkticus at 4:19 AM on August 26, 2011

Another cool feature: you can check out how various color schemes look to folks who are colorblind (they have a few types of colorblindness). ...although I'd love to know how they figured this out.

I've recommended it to teachers to end the eye-bleeding color choices high school kids like to make in PowerPoint (i.e. magenta writing on a bright purple background)
posted by smirkette at 4:56 AM on August 26, 2011

And it works on my iPad! Nice!
posted by Biblio at 5:22 AM on August 26, 2011

And while we're at it, Colour Lovers, very similar to Kuler.
posted by adamrice at 6:11 AM on August 26, 2011

As a person living with a quite colorblind partner, I must say: this is extremely cool. Thanks for posting this.
posted by kinnakeet at 6:21 AM on August 26, 2011

Whoa. Can't believe that this never got posted here. It's been an indispensable tool for web design for me for years.
posted by schmod at 6:53 AM on August 26, 2011

This is really cool! But I have a question: there's a photoshop export option (ACO), but while it downloads for me, I get an error message once I try to open it in Photoshop. Is this because I only have Photoshop Elements? Do I need to be a big-time designer to get the good stuff?
posted by misha at 9:20 AM on August 26, 2011

Ooh, this will make my life as a design-impaired web developer easier. Thank you!
posted by Condroidulations! at 9:32 AM on August 26, 2011

Bookmarked. Thanks!
posted by Quietgal at 9:38 AM on August 26, 2011

There was an interesting paper presented at SIGGRAPH Color Compatibility from Large Datasets that used ratings on Kuler and COLOURLovers to train a model for rating color schemes. This was then used to optimise color schemes, extract good color schemes from images, and pick a color to complete a color scheme.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 7:58 AM on September 3, 2011 [1 favorite]