Colour and emotion are very closely related, so it makes sense that designers need to pay particular attention to colour choice.
Whether you’re a website designer, logo designer, print designer or other, this comprehensive list of colour tools and resources will help. The links are separated into the following: colour palettes and combinations, colour theory, colour tools, colour patterns, and colour code.
Colour palettes and combinations
COLOURlovers gives people who use color – whether for ad campaigns, logo design, or in architectural specification – a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, comment on news and read color-related articles / interviews.
Nature provides some of the most striking and beautiful color palettes imaginable! You don’t have to look far to find great inspiration.
Color combinations - cure for designers block
Choosing the right color combination is vital for any design - logos included. In these pages you will find more than 200 color combinations to help you in selecting colors for your website or identity project.
Color combinations, schemes and palettes
The heart of the site is the Combo Tester, which allows designers to see how different color combinations work together on the screen.
colr.org has been around since March 2005. It has two purposes: 1) It’s a tool to let designers fiddle around with colors. 2) It’s a jungle gym for software ideas.
Organised into 3 distinct colour groups - neutrals, muted tones and bold colours, you may recognise a few of the shades from some of your favourite Web 2.0 sites.
Colour theory
The Color Wheel and Color Theory
The color wheel is one of the first places I turn for color inspiration and guidance when choosing a color scheme. Color charts and pre-made palettes are nice, but the color wheel is simple and easy to understand and use.
Did you know that colour and visual elements activate the right brain (emotions), while the printed words activate the left brain (logic)?
Color: Meaning, Symbolism and Psychology
Our reaction to color is almost instantaneous and has a profound impact on the choices we make everyday. This lens is a quick look at general responses to colors based on research, historical significance of color and word association studies.
Color plays a vitally important role in the world in which we live. Color can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite.
Why study color theory? If you are involved in the creation or design of visual documents, an understanding of color will help when incorporating it into your own designs.
Colour Harmony: Secrets of Web Color Revealed
One of the most challenging aspects of visual design is developing effective color harmonies that strike a balance between monotony and overstimulation.
The history of color, colors with pastels, the meaning of color, color perspective, and much more…
Color Theory: A brief tutorial
For a long time, there has been a problem that fledgling designers have run into. This problem seems insignificant to most, but it is quite possibly the most important factor in a design or piece of artwork. I’m talking about the issue of COLOR.
Color is the byproduct of the spectrum of light, as it is reflected or absorbed, as received by the human eye and processed by the human brain. It’s also a great design element!
Insights into the purpose and effect of physical elements, design, and layout of web pages … and why clients should let designers handle design.
Colour tools
Explore, create and share color themes. Use online, or download themes for Adobe Creative Suite 2 and 3.
I’ve borrowed the formulas to compute the contrast and brightness difference between two colors from the W3C.
If you only use one filter, use the grayscale filter which will not only point out potential problem areas.
Picking colors is not an easy task. It is definitely an art. But available software tools don’t make the task any easier. This is, in part, because most color models (such as RGB, HSV, and web color palettes) are based on mathematical formulas which have little to do with how the human eye sees colors.
The Flash Color Scheme Generator
ColorToy 2.0 is a Flash based color scheme generator and picker. It generates complementary color schemes based on your inputted color values or randomly, which is much more fun.
Start with one of the following actions: 1. Browse for an image (of type png gif jpg jpeg) and upload it. 2. Select an image from the drop down menu.
Hover over the wheel to view colors. Click to choose a web-smart color. Reload to clear.
ColorBlender – your free online tool for color matching and palette design.
Complementary, opposite, neutral, shade, analogous, triadic, tetradic…
The 216-Color Webmaster’s Palette.
Colour Scheme 1, Colour Scheme 2
Experienced designers choose colors intuitively. However, finding a good combination of colors may be sometimes long and gruelling work. These tools will find a set of colors you can start with, and may facilitate the search for the optimal color palette.
You can get a related fix here at the ColorSchemer Blog.
Color Shades: Colors and Lighter Hexadecimal Codes and Swatches
This chart shows a list of colors and, for each color, three other colors based on the original color but with higher light values. You can use this chart to set up color schemes.
This page is provided to allow you to check the contrast of two colours using the W3C’s colour contrast algorithm by specifying the colours directly.
ColourMod comes in many different juicy versions. Each version is tailored to fit your specific needs and desires. From colour conversions on your desktop, to colour picking on the web, there is something for you.
Provides information and services related to color technology. During the years it has become a popular source of technical and commercial information about colors, color science and color programming techniques.
This perl tool uses ImageMagick to fetch a chosen pixel’s hex color value. You can use any image you like. This is very handy if you’re trying to match an image background perfectly.
Find matching colors for your web page
Find matching colors for your web page.
This color schemer is a simple tool to help you experiment with various color schemes for your next web or print project.
Kolur is a simple (and hopefully) enjoyable way to browse color palettes. Designs displayed in our gallery go beyond the generic 3 colored dots, and attempt to portray the possibilities in palettes.
In this new era of web-based applications I thought it would be worthwhile to see if there were any online image editing tools that would meet requirements and maybe more.
There is a form at the bottom of this page that lets you choose any URL you want to extract colors from.
The Sessions.edu Colour Calculator
Identify colour harmonies faster than with any colour wheel or chart. Use it to select a colour scheme for a logo design or identity project.
Specify a base color in decimal (R,G,B) or #hex - or in CSS color specification format. Choose Lightness steps (20%, 10% or 5%). Press SHOW.
Set the background color, then hover over swatches to test how text color works.
Colour patterns
Feel free to use any of these patterns on your own site.
Pattern-bomb is a site for everything you ever needed regarding Photoshop patterns.
Over 1,000 patterns for your inspiration.
Colour codes
Color Codes Matching Chart HTML (Convert CMYK, RGB Hex)
Note that the conversions in this color codes chart are best described as “nominal”. They will produce an invertible conversion between the RGB code and a subset of CMYK; that is, one can take an RGB color code and convert to certain CMYK colors, and from these CMYK colors obtain the matching, original RGB codes.
More colour resource lists
If you haven’t already found the colour tool or article you were looking for, here are additional lists of colour resources for your convenience.
55+ Color Tools and Resources for Graphic Designers
Every designer will find these free online color tools useful. Whether you are a Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Fashion Designer, Interior Designer, Logo Designer, or any other.
101 Color Resources for Web Designers
101 color resources for Web designers. The categories are listed alphabetically as are all the links contained within each category.
Top 6 Most Useful Color Tools for Designers
There are a lot of lists of color tools out there, but how many turn out to be of any use? The best tools are user friendly, easily customizable and provide you with every code or file format that you need.
Do you have a favourite colour tool or resource?
If you’ve used any of the tools shown above, or if you know of other resources, feel free to add your thoughts / links by leaving a comment.
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