¶ There are a number of really handy online colour tools coming to my notice. They all help the untrained or unreliable eye to come up with colour schemes based on complimentary and harmonious colours. And, with one exception, they all use very nifty DOM methods and valid XHTML.
- Color Blend by Eric Meyer
Calculates up to ten mid-points between two colours. - Color Schemer
Very elegant tool providing 16 harmonious colours based on a given colour, with the ability to lighten and darken the scheme. - Color Scheme by Pixy
Incredibly comprehensive tool providing five different schemes (monochromatic, base+complement, etc). Pick a colour from a colour wheel and adjust the saturation, brightness and hue. Results shown in web palette colours, normal vision or adjusted to simulate eight different sorts of colour blindness. - EasyRGB
Based on an RGB colour, creates 12 harmonies and complements. - ColorMatch Remix
Creates three sets of three harmonious colours based on an RGB colour. Uses a fantastic cross-browser DHTML slider. Can also save and load themes.
My favourite is Colour Scheme, primarily because it’s the only tool which lets you adjust the colour saturation, but also because of the awe inspiring underlying code. Clearly using these computer-generated colour schemes will work well, but ultimately they are no substitute for the eye of an artist, as Luke Wroblewski indicates in Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design.
Comments
1
Richard, this is an excellent selection of valuable tools! Thank you for sharing this.
I humbly suggest to add to this valuable reference also the tools listed at:
http://tinyurl.com/2dv9p
Keep up your great work!
Robin
2
I’ve written a color scheme tool that allows you to preview color schemes. It doesn’t yet have the functionality to assist in color selection, but it does allow you to preview any five colors, and it has a “save” feature.
If you’re interested, it’s at my website. Constructive comments are always welcomed.
3
I have also developed a small program that assists web and graphic designers with color picking and matching. It is available for download at:
http://www.colorshade.com
I would love to receive feedback from anyone as this is a very new program.
Thanks!
John
4
zzu
5
Thanks for your links!
Apropos… recently I started to put together a list of useful web design & web-programming tools. The idea was simple: I wanted to list on a one single page the most useful web-sites, which make the life of web designers easier. If you ask the old uncle Google where you can find proper web design-instruments he shows an infinite list, whereby "his" links aren't actually that useful. At the same time really helpful pages aren't shown at all…
In a nutshell – I’d like to present this list which was created with the help of many web designers and enthusiasts from Germany and United States, but mostly it was created by myself. I hope my list will be useful for the readers of your blog!
URL: http://www.alvit.de/vf/en/00_webtools.html
With warm greetings from Saarbruecken, Germany,
Vitaly Friedman,
http://www.alvit.de/vf/
6
I guess I posted the wrong link – sorry…
Here is the right one:
http://www.alvit.de/vf/en/00_webtools.html
7
Wow, great resource for info, exactly what I needed.
8
I have just written a new color tool here:
http://pourpre.com/colordb/?l=eng
This is a kind of “beta” version, so there are probably some bugs, and the english translation should be reviewed (I am french, sorry).
I would appreciate any suggestion.
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