On Color

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So you’d like to build/design your own website. More often than not, choosing the right color(s) may not be so straight forward. Did you know that there are dozens of websites, softwares and online services that would make your job much much easier. Here are a few of those.

Some background

If you want to learn a bit about color theory here are few starters:

Art School Online – Color Theory and Mixing: Color theory in 16 shortish lessons
Color Matters: Short and brief tutorial on color theory
Color Worqx: Excellent site on color theory

Online Color Tools

The online color tools and programs are so powerful that you just don’t need to spend any money on those expensive softwares.

Colors On The Web

Excellent site on color. Some basic color theory and a superb color generator – much better then many commercial software.

Their color generator – Color Wizard – does the job beautifully.

They also have a color wheel that generates random colors. Play with it and you are sure to catch a few nice color combinations.

They also have a section on color schemes.

Color Mixers

Awesome site. Definetly deserves a visit (or two).

Color Match Redux

A powerful online utility. Definitely worths a visit. At this point I’d like to mention a small detail. Let’s say there’s one color that you really like and want to use it in your site or project. Or it may just be that you may have touse that color for whatever reason. These two online color generators (and many others) will produce colors that will go along nicely with your initial input. But do not think that they all generate the same colors. They may, they may not. It all depends on their algorithm. Anyway, the point is that you should try many of them as possible before deciding on your color combination.

Color Scheme Chooser

 Yet another color generator. Check it out and decide for yourself.

Technicolor

Yet another excellent online utility. You define a color and it generates a 12-color palette. Also gives you the option to see those colors on a CSS based custom page and let’s you generate the CSS code.

Color Blender

A simple color tool to blend two given colors. May come in handy from time to time.

Color Palette

Color Palette is similar to color blender.

Color Scheme2

Color Palette Generator

Color Palette Generator is a truely unique online utility. You upload a picture and it generates colors that would match with it. You can do the same job with photoshop, too, but if you don’t have that expensive software or time to learn the technique then fear no more.

Colr.org

Another must-checkout-at-least-once. Allows you to upload a picture and make a color palette accordingly. They also have user submitted colors and color palettes.

Commercial Software

As always, you have the option to buy a software.

Color Impact

If you decide on buying a software my advice would be Color Impact. It involves almost everything you may need related to color generation, scheme creation, saving those schemes in possible formats, etc. $59.95.

Color Schemer Studio

Another quality software. Has the option to generate colors based on your pictures. $49.99.

Color Wheel Pro

Unlike other color utilities, Color Wheel Pro lets you preview your color schemes on real-world examples — websites, logos, product packages.

Well, I hope these tools will ease your job. If you want to check out websites where people submit their favorite colors and palettes, have a look at Colour Lovers, DFCKR and Color Combos.

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