

Tools To Help You Choose Your Website Color Scheme - binarray2000
http://www.techiemania.com/5-awesome-free-tools-to-help-you-choose-your-website-color-scheme.html

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phugoid
The best weapon in your arsenal is a designer (human).

I built a theme using a palette from colorcombos.com, and thought it was just
great. When I suggested the same colours to have a logo created, the designer
I worked with tweaked them without even asking.

When I applied the new colour to the website, it knocked the wind out of me.
Some people have the gift. There's no replacement for an artist who
understands what you're trying to express.

She managed to change the way I feel about my own project.

~~~
stevenj
Who was the designer?

~~~
phugoid
Please drop me an email (see my profile) if you want to get in touch with her.

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DTrejo
Please revise the title to conform to the guidelines, thank you!

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

 _If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective,
we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How
To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is
meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."_

~~~
adnam
Until the submission guidelines are summarized on the submission page, people
should stop whining about the wording of titles.

~~~
bajsejohannes
I disagree. It's a nice idea to summarize and link to the guidelines, but this
'whining' actually helps to make good titles.

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uptown
It's worth knowing the back-story to Kuler as it relates to another great
color resource named ColourLovers:

[http://www.colourlovers.com/web/blog/2007/07/06/for-the-
reco...](http://www.colourlovers.com/web/blog/2007/07/06/for-the-record-adobe-
kuler-vs-colourlovers)

~~~
PonyGumbo
Thanks - I was wondering about this. I've used ColourLovers.com for years, but
I've never heard of Kuler until today.

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geon
As a designed I really find this kind of tools useless. Especially when I get
a color scheme delivered by the client.

It's not so much about that I'm an awesome designer (although I like to
entertain that view of myself), but that five blocks of solid color says very
little about how the colors will be used.

One problem is that the amount of colors you use and what elements get what
color will completely change the impression of the design. A block of solid
orange also can't express the subtle effect of gradients. Have a look at the
spoon in this photo for an example:
<http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/tea-8.jpg>

Another problem is optical illusions. The perception of colors change very
much with how much of them you see. A thin text will need to be darker that a
bold headline to appear equal, and one color will look different next to two
others (making a solid color look like a gradient next to an actual gradient).

The tool that would be useful would be an editor that lets you pick colors for
specific stereotype elements of a website, like a h1-h3 header, body
text/background, blockquote, logo etc, _combined with font, textsize and
boldness_.

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lordlarm
I can recommend these two:

* <http://colorlovers.com>

* <http://colorschemedesigner.com>

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wahnfrieden
I'm not totally happy with any I've tried yet (they all have some glaring UI
annoyances) but <http://colorschemedesigner.com/> has been pretty useful for
me.

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nrbafna
someone recently posted this on HN, colorapi.com... generated color palettes
from flickr image search.

also uses node.js :-)

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Keyframe
All you need is some basic color theory and adobe kuler
<http://kuler.adobe.com/> which is a helpful tool, integrated into CS
applications. This applies to all color related work. Kuler is the best option
if you're using CS.

On color theory you can check out:
[http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/472/Color-
The...](http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/472/Color-
Theory%3A-The-Mechanics-of-Color)

There was also an fxphd course, but I don't think it's available anymore.

