As designers, we can never have “too much” of a color inspiration. Here are a few tools/sites that can aid in the pursuit of the perfect color combination! As you will come to see, each of these sites has a particularly strong point; a powerful tool that works exceptionally well for a specific need. And using a combination of them should give you the right resource for any situation when you find yourself lacking in color inspiration.
Adobe Kuler
This is one of the leading free web-based apps for color palette creation. With this tool, you can browse color themes that have already been created, view and store your own creations and upload images to extract color schemes from. It has several interactive and intuitive tools to build color themes, as well as modify existing ones and search, share and rate other designers’ themes within the Kuler community. One of the most convenient features of this app is that it integrates with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (CS6 and CC).
New & Best Feature: You can now grab color on the go through Kuler’s free app for the iPhone. It pulls colors from your surroundings and extracts a series of colors, which enables you to use it on your design program like Photoshop CS6 & CC as an extension!
Color Explorer
This tool allows you to manipulate and explore pure colors (ignoring the intermediaries of patterns, gradients, or images). You can import, create and alter color palettes and extract hues from images. What’s more, you get access to cool color libraries such as RAL, Websafe Colors and Trumatch. And you get a super sophisticated Color Matching Tool too.
Best Feature: Their Color Matching algorithm allows you to create various related palettes by selecting different combinations based on color theory, such as split-complementary colors. Downside: This isn’t the site for you, if you’re searching for inspiration that goes beyond simple color.
COLOURlovers
Some of the best ways to begin a creative workflow is to see what other designers are doing, and the same goes for color exploration. This is an online community of creatives that share colors, palettes and patterns. You can browse by category or trend, join a group, have discussions and even buy software and art that can be printed from your own creations. It’s a great place to get feedback on your color designs from other designers, as well as gain inspiration by seeing what others are making.
Color Scheme Designer
This program creates customizable color schemes based on different angles and combinations on the color wheel. The resulting schemes offer hue variations to choose from, and each Pantone number is provided so that you can easily transfer the accurate colors to your design.
Colrd
With a database divided into sections dedicated to elements such as multicolored palettes, solitary hues, images, patterns and gradients, this tool offers a convenient download option for each of these.
Select the image type and opt for a search or scroll through the common examples. Once you have selected the palette, the truly unique thing happens. You get to view the CSS code for the color or gradient of your choice. And that isn’t all; you can save the code to an online assortment. Or, maybe edit it with a group of sliders of similar colors suggested by the tool. You also get the HSL and RGB parameters from the tool.
Downside: It doesn’t look like it’s been updated for a while.
Design Inspiration
An inclusive inspiration collection, this tool gives you the choice to find images across categories and styles. It works in a simple manner; you just select five hues from the tool’s comprehensive palette.
Once you have done this, the site generates all images that match this combination from its database. You get to see the hex numbers and can click on them separately. You can also save the images in a collection you create on the site. When you need the finesse to narrow down search results with specific terms and categories, this can be your ideal choice. And it gives you the opportunity to search with multiple color palettes too.
Design Seeds
There is a color palette for just about every occasion, creating bright swatches. Click on a color sample to find related shades, color schemes and color value you can use to recreate the look at home.
myPANTONE
Pantone is the universal color matching system, so it’s extremely helpful to have access to Pantone swatches and their corresponding numbers wherever you are. In place of carrying around a physical collection of swatches, this mobile app gives you access to over 13,000 Pantone colors so you can be sure your chosen colors will translate to your design correctly. This app also lets you create palettes for inspiration and testing, which you can then share with friends, clients and vendors. This is an easy way to ensure that you use the right colors in your designs, and communicate what they will look like to the people you’re working with.
Pictaculous
If you like how a picture looks, then you may want to try to use the color scheme in it. However, selecting the right colors manually can be a tricky task. Thanks to Pictaculous you don’t have to worry about that, because this free service will automatically generate a color scheme for you, based on a picture you upload.
Shutterstock Spectrum
What makes this tool quite an attractive choice is not only its ability for you to search through stock photography by color (rather than keyword descriptions although this is also available) but also its ability to not only display the images on a large scale. The fine interface offers one of the best ways to choose high-quality images with the right palette from the database and in real time.
The ease of use also makes it a popular choice. A slider helps you determine the color search. But that’s not all. You can also specify a keyword to determine the subject matter of the stock images you wish for. With an accuracy that impresses, the color search tool can come up with images that match your subject matter choice and color palette preference. Another option lets you filter images and narrow results by brightness and color balance.
Best Feature: Within a color search, you can choose to view photography in the same color range, but with progressively lighter shades. Downside: You can only choose one color, as opposed to the multi-hued selections you can make in other sites.
SpyColor
The site is a free service that provides information about color, many color conversions (RGB, CMYK, HSL, HSV, XYZ, xyY, CIELAB, CIELUV, CIELCH, Hunter Lab and YIQ) and a wide range of pre-made color schemes. Schemes (harmonies), like complementary, split-complementary, triadic, tetradic, five-tone, clash, analogous and monochromatic colors can be found on each color page.
TinEye Labs
Unlike Stockphoto Spectrum, TinEye Labs pulls it’s images from the Flickr community and it allows for a combination of up to five colors to be selected (and also adjusts the percentage of each) for preview. It offers an easy and effective way to find images that match your preferred color combination at no cost. The free images with the same hues will be available on the screen grid. The color dividers display the percentage of the color used. With a drag and drop functionality, you can change the distribution.
It’s also possible to tweak or eliminate a color completely from the panel. Again, if you have a specific color in mind, you can just add the hex number in the URL and you will get it. It is one fantastic and intuitive way to complete your color search.
Best Feature: The ability to stipulate the weight of each color gives you perfect control in finding the exact combination of hues. Downside: There’s no way to narrow results by topic, so if you need an image in the right color palette and of the right subject, you may be in for a lengthy search.
