Color me crazy - 10 best online color tools

by Dolores Parker Oct 9th 2008

If you're tackling some graphic design project or maybe even your wall decor, getting color hints from ready made color templates from professional designers can be useful. Below are 10 of the better sites to help you out on your design challenge.

ColorCombos - nice color palettes to choose from. If there's a particular website whose colors you want to snag, check out their "Grab Website Colors" engine. You just input the URL of the site you're reviewing and ColorCombos extracts the palette for you.

COLOURlovers - this is pretty close to color mecca. This post should actually be filed as a Timewaster because you can spend hours checking out the various palettes and patterns and rolling your own. The site is full of features such as create your own palette from a URL you're inspired by, join groups devoted to colors (srsly), shore up on the latest color trends, contribute your own content and vote on others.

ColorExplorer - another site that's feature rich and full of color goodies. Color import from images, palette export to most programs, convert any number of colors into a matching palette, 1 click palette filters and adjustments, plus no requirement for site registration.

Kuler - not surprisingly, Adobe has a fetching web app to help you generate color schemes and if you have Adobe's Creative Suite 4, Kuler is built in. Kuler has great tools such as color extractor from an image, theme creation from 1 to several colors, as well as a community you can join and give and receive comments on yours and other's creations.

ColorJack - very nice color site featuring several apps such as Color Sphere which allows you to choose the right color scheme supporting 18 formulas and 9 color blindness simulations. There's also Color Galaxy, an online color visualizer with colors from 27 libraries including everyone's favorite forever and ever, Crayola.

Keep reading for more...

Sessions.edu - from Sessions Online School of Design, a nice color calculator to help you find color harmonies and schemes. I like the geometric filters which allow you to see your color palette in various patterns.

Color Palette Generator - not too fancy, but sometimes less is more. At this site you can upload a photo and get the corresponding color palette.

Color Hunter - allows you to create and find color palettes from photographs.

Color Scheme Generator - your basic color tool, nothing fancy. Nice online tool to generate color schemes and palettes to create good-looking and well balanced and harmonic web pages.

Stripe Generator - this is a fun tool to help you design stripe patterns for your next project.

Let us know if there are other "must have" color tools you just can't live without.

Tags: color, color combos, color explorer, color hunter, color jack, color palette, color palette generator, color scheme generator, color-theory, ColorCombos, ColorExplorer, ColorHunter, ColorPaletteGenerator, ColorSchemeGenerator, colour lovers, kuler, learning, online color tools, palette, sessions color calculator, stripe generator, web

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

copper said 1:26PM on 10-09-2008

How about toucan on aviary? http://a.viary.com/tools/toucan

It's got more features than kuler and integrates in with the rest of the publicly released Aviary suite.

Dolores Parker said 10:30PM on 10-09-2008

You're right. Aviary rocks!

-=Ben=- said 2:25PM on 10-09-2008

ColorCop is what I use.

Lloyd Dalton said 10:24PM on 10-09-2008

Nice list :)

You might have a look at http://www.colr.org too

Adam Sheppard said 10:55PM on 10-09-2008

Don't forget the ColorPicker sidebar widget from the talented Mr.Jeff Weir at Microsoft Live Labs

http://livelabs.com/blog/pull-down-the-shades-a-color-sidebar-gadget/

Design Live said 1:33PM on 10-10-2008

Here are my 6 favorite online color tools

Unknown said 1:35PM on 10-10-2008

http://garmahis.com/reviews/color-matching-color-schemes-and-palette-design-with-6-online-tools/

mark said 10:55PM on 10-11-2008

Colorspire is nice.

tony said 3:38AM on 1-07-2009

www.colorschemer.com/online

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