ColorSuckr uses photos to generate color palettes you can use in your artwork and designs. You can choose from one of the photos on the main page, search Flickr, or input the URL of any webpage to find source material. ColorSuckr automatically finds the main photo on any Flickr page you enter.

There's also a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser's toolbar. Clicking it gives you a choice of any image on the current page. Once you've got an image, ColorSuckr will give you a draggable selection of colors, complete with hex, web safe and RGB info so you can get them exactly right in your designs. It's a unique way to get a good palette, and especially comes in handy if you're working on a layout that has to match a photo.

There are a lot of ways to come up with a color palette. You can search through collections of them on a site like Adobe Kuler, you can put them together from scratch, or you can borrow someone else's. What if you want something easy and unique? Try CSS Drive's Colors Palette Generator. It takes any image and creates a selection of palettes full of colors that are sure to work well together.

When you upload your image or enter an image URL, the generator will give you three sets of seven colors each. It offers light, medium and dark palettes, so you can choose the one that's best suited to your task. If you need more to work with, it also offers a full palette, containing 49 colors. When you find something you like, you can export the results as a css stylesheet or Photoshop swatches for convenient use in your projects.

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.

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