Adobe color schemes. Color mixers. ColorSchemer Studio vs Adobe Kuler. Ready-made color solutions

Adobe Color CC is a new Android application for designers. Allows you to save color combinations that you really like so that you can use them later in full-fledged image applications: illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop.

Adobe Color CC for Android

• Instant color capture - the screen acts as a viewfinder. In turn, the application remembers in real time all the colors that fall into the viewfinder. To save the selected area, simply touch the screen at the desired point.
• Automatic Photo Saving – If you like a photo, why not save it to an album so you can make the most of color themes in the future.
• Deep Customizations – Use the slider or interactive color wheel to customize colors. If you need new ideas, then there are ready-made collections with themes at your service so that you can understand how you can open up new possibilities.
• Get inspired and inspire - share images via email, Facebook, Twitter. You can also publish your work on color.adobe.com.
• Take advantage of cloud-based creative libraries - here you get access to compatible desktop and mobile applications of the company - Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign

All of us love these pictures to some extent. Some more, some less.

An intriguing start, isn't it? What am I talking about? Here's what it's about:

And, I think, I’m probably not the only one who had a crazy thought in my head: “I wish I could arrange my picture by color!”

You never know why...

Using the free program "Adobe Kuler" "new name "Adobe Color CC it's easy to do.

Its main benefit is that you can upload your image - be it a picture, be it a photograph, and it (that is, the program) will break down the picture for you into 5 primary colors.

Question - Why do I actually need this?

Answer 1 - Situation - The work has been sold, there are no such materials in nature anymore, but there was a desire to repeat the atmosphere. Let's sort it by color and create approximately what you need.

Answer 2 - The customer asks to create something based on a photo from a magazine, the Internet, etc. It’s not clear what they’re made of, but here they are – the primary colors – and the work went smoothly!

Answer 3 - There is a Photo of you or the Customer, which is not about the work at all, but there is such beauty on it that you want to reproduce it from the same colors and then we will get something filled with the same exciting moments as there... in that blue dream .. Oh!..

4. FOR DECOUPAGE - SIMPLY A TREASURE, IT’S EASY AND SIMPLE TO CHOOSE THE COLOR ACCORDING TO THE MAIN PICTURE!

Convinced? No, well, at least just to see what kind of program it is?

Yeah! Moreover, it’s just a couple of clicks away!

A red checkmark marks where we need it, select the second item - “Create images” and then everything is as simple as a steamed turnip - we load our picture and the program itself parses it for us into five primary colors.

Example:

Moreover, the plus signs in the circles select the colors that the program considered necessary to show you, and these circles can be moved and then you can change the final five colors at your discretion and, for example, change one according to your need.

Let's say like this:

It is clear that you can change all five plus signs at will and then you simply choose the five desired colors.

In the forums discussing this program, some users complained that five colors weren’t enough for me...
But the program gives you and me a lot of options to choose from after uploading a specific photo.
If we take a closer look at what was offered to us, we will see:

In the highlighted circle, I added an additional tab that opens when you hover the mouse and there you can select the appropriate color mood for the photo:

Colorful
- bright
- muted
- rich
- dark
- free

The default is custom. But here’s how the picture changes when, say, the “colorful” palette changes to, for example, a muted one:

Colorful:

Muted:

Thus, the required number of colors used in your picture changes significantly and then the program offers you to save the whole thing.

But you can save only with your registration code, which I don’t have - I’m not registered in the Adobe program .. so what? .. And nothing - there is a standard Microsoft desktop tool “Scissors” - we use them to cut out what we need and either then we print out the palette, or collage it and rush at full speed to the materials store in order to buy what we wanted today!

Let's give an example on some Internet image:

Or here is my own abstract picture:

Friends! Thank you very much for your time.

I hope this find will be useful to you and I have no doubt that an inquisitive handicraft mind will find a use for it, if it hasn’t already (as you read)!

- an application with which everyone has the opportunity to work with fonts, colors and other things. In other words, you can open a picture or photo you like through this application and save the colors that interest you in it. All this opens up great prospects for creative users, so the application is very useful and will come in handy for those who work in graphic editors.

The application interface is very simple, it will not be difficult to understand it. So you can safely install the program on your mobile device, because you will not find such quality anywhere else. Since the developers of this application are the famous Adobe company, we can safely say that the program is worthy of attention. However, each user will have to register before starting to work in it. This is not a complicated and absolutely free process. It will take at most five minutes, but you will receive a profile on the Adobe network with which you can later work in other applications of this company.

Such free programs help creative users realize their ideas even while on the move. After all, by installing the application on your smartphone, you have the opportunity to perform actions anywhere. It is also convenient if you decide to go work outdoors. It will be even more convenient with a tablet computer, because the program supports all mobile devices. That is why a huge number of users around the world use this application and recommend it to their friends.

I think all readers already understand that colors should not be annoying, they should not be contrasting when working with the main resolutions of visitors’ monitors, etc. nonsense that has already been discussed more than once on other blogs. I won’t repeat their words, just Google it.

What am I going to write about anyway? About several mixer services - selectors of colors appropriate for the visitor, which is undoubtedly a useful tool in the work of a usability designer. Colors are undoubtedly a very important tool in achieving greater convenience on the site, which is clearly proven by the example of Yandex. For example, the same color differentiation of blocks that I casually described in a note about ideal forms, and I am going to continue this issue in the near future.

ColorSchemer Studio

What is a mixer? This, to put it simply, is a mixer. It doesn’t matter what, but in my case it’s colors - after all, in order to get any color you need to create a combination of several others. Therefore, we need a good and convenient tool for this very mixing, with a necessarily intuitive interface, and a bunch of gadgets implemented in this very intuitive interface. We're usability experts, right?

In order for my thoughts to find a basis, I looked at Wikipedia to see what it would give me by definition of a “mixer” (. So, what do we have there:

Mixer- a small household appliance designed for beating eggs, preparing drinks, mousses, omelettes, batters, etc. Mixers can be stationary or manual (more common devices).

A very... very comprehensive answer to such a specific request. To prevent other people from having problems in the future, I created the definition of Color Mixer.

In the first part of this series of articles, I will talk about the ColorSchemer Studio program from the company of the same name, which was a pioneer in the creation of similar products, the number of which has already exceeded several dozen, in a wide variety of forms

In the screenshot below you can take a look at the most important tool of the program - the color wheel. This is where we will spend most of our time in this program. It is easy to use - just select a color, and it will show the most suitable and contrasting colors for it. It's simple.

This is the starting tool, which usually wastes the most time - after all, the neighboring color may be liked more, and it (the neighboring one, that is) has several more compatible ones. In general - beauty, not a tool.

The Color Harmonies tool helps us see the stages of transition between two primary colors. Moreover, this tool produces 2 types of possible transitions - dark and light. Comfortable.

Best compatible colors

Everything about this tool is incredibly simple - we select a color, and the program gives us the colors that are best suited to be used together with the original. I will note that these colors on their own may not be very beautiful, but when used together with the other 5, you get really beautiful things.

Photoschemer

An interesting and new function of the program is to take several colors from a photo and generate compatible ones based on them. We kill two birds with one stone - in most cases the photographs show natural colors that do not cause rejection. As you can see from the screenshot, the colors are really good and don’t try to eat our brains.

Color mixer

Again, the simplest and most intuitive tool - we load two different colors, and get different proportions from mixing them. To be honest, I have never used this tool as it was unnecessary. Although I hope someone will still need it, otherwise it would not be part of the program. Perhaps artists?

Color Combination Analyzer

Let's imagine that we have already made a color selection, now we need to reap the benefits. Analyzer of combinations of two colors - background and text. Those. this is the best tool for usability experts - by choosing the background color you can instantly get the best combination for the text. That's great.

Quick preview

Not only will the program select good colors with your help, but it will also help you arrange them in the correct order on the page. By the way, psychological methods are used for this instrument, which is interesting in itself.

Seal

After we have saved our personalized color palette, perhaps we need to print it? And it's easy to do with the Print Your Color Schemes tool. With the same tool you can convert the results into pdf - an excellent opportunity, considering that pdf has been standardized.

Import and export

In addition to printing, it would be nice to be able to import and export colors from Photoshop. And we are again given this wonderful opportunity. Here is a list that are compatible with the program's import-export capabilities.

Import:

You can organize import from any site CSS (wow...), gif image, color table file (.act), and photoshop color palette (.aco)

Export:

You can export back to any CSS, or html body attributes, to a gif image, photoshop color palette, color table files, illustrator color palette (oh my god, we got here), Adobe Fireworks, and Corel Painter

Quite a lengthy list, isn’t it?

The program also includes an ultra-convenient dropper as a bonus. By the way, you can download it separately for free.

Price

Alas and ah - but they demand money for the program, which is quite logical - the product is excellent. It costs $49 in both variations - both for Windows and MacOS (I think many were already scared, looking at the screenshots, that Windows users were left behind. Fortunately, this is not the case).

To test the program, you can use the 15-day trial version, but the popup will interfere when you start the program.

Ready-made combinations

And now the most delicious thing - on the program’s website there is simply a SEA of excellent color solutions. Go for it!

Online version of ColorSchemer Studio

conclusions

It’s certainly worth buying the program (of course, it can be hacked, but that’s everyone’s personal choice). ColorSchemer Studio provides a wealth of possibilities for usability designers, graphic designers, and even artists. Beginners should also recommend it, because it will help us avoid monsters with invincible flowers.

In the first article, we found out what a color mixer is and what you need to eat it with to further increase your appetite using the ColorSchemer Studio program as an example. Undoubtedly a good thing, but paid, and today I decided to devote an article to a free, web-based tool from Adobe, which, like the ColorSchemer company, figured out in time what the design fraternity was missing. So meet Adobe Kuler.

This note will be much smaller than the previous one, but no less useful. Why less? Because web services, no matter how hard they try, cannot yet grow into a full-fledged program - therefore, they have fewer features, but are more convenient. Another definite plus is that Kuler saves the results in your Adobe ID - i.e. in the event of a change of OS on your computer, or constant changes of computer (work-home, home and work) - everything will be available if the computers have Internet. Which is much more convenient than carrying ready-made palettes from ColorSchemer Studio on a flash drive.

Color mixer

Compared to a program on a computer, web services are clearly inferior in capabilities, but not as much as before. It has everything you need and then some.

Unlike ColorSchemer Studio, where the role of a mixer is shamelessly performed by a color wheel, here some kind of color barrel handles this responsibility. At least that’s what my associations were - we mix colors in a barrel, while looking at this same barrel from above. In principle, it does not complicate the task at all, and even most likely makes the task easier - the expected color can be obtained much faster.

But you may not get it. Unfortunately, with all the apparent convenience, I often catch myself thinking that I know approximately what color I want, but I don’t know how to get it - and here Kuler makes the biggest mess in its interface - not knowing the color codes, and not understanding the mechanics of the service - it is quite difficult to obtain the expected color.

Fortunately, the developers from Adobe Labs know their job well, so you quickly get used to the somewhat strange interface.

Ready-made color solutions

The very first time you come to it, a beautiful rating of the best palettes, according to visitors, is given - you can immediately select them and continue working with them. The advantages are clear - you don’t need to go far, everything is already ready on the shelf.

Of the minuses, I would like to say only one thing - cooler is a fairly popular service, and if you choose colors from the top ten, you run the risk of encountering a “color clone” of your future site. Those. The best solution is to create your own unique collection, since it’s convenient.

Ready-made solutions can be sorted in several ways:

1. At the rate- in principle, there is nothing to explain - the best collections of colors according to Cooler users are issued, which, by the way, you can also evaluate and look at in detail.

2. By popularity- as far as I understand, this section displays the most viewed color solutions. It seems to me that this rating is not much different from sorting by rating, because the vast majority of people will not go further than the second or third page of the cooler.

3. New- if you have just created your own unique palette, and would like someone to see and download it besides you - this section is exactly for people like you. The newest color palettes are published here. The downside is that more than 20 palettes are created every minute, so you can get lost here too.

Having created your solution, you can also add it to the site.

Export

Unfortunately, there is no import in the service itself, i.e. It will not be possible to improve the already prepared palette of your website. It will only be possible to recreate them again. Fortunately, export is available here and allows you to transfer the finished results to any of the Adobe tools in the CS2 and CS3 line. Well done. Unfortunately, there is no export to Corel, and other programs other than Adobe for obvious reasons.

conclusions

Like any web solution for some problem, the tool is a little inferior in functionality to its software counterparts, but it wins in convenience and speed of obtaining results. I recommend using this service if you often change your computer; your colors posted on the Internet will not disappear from you. For those who do not have problems with data transfer, I still recommend using a paid software analogue - ColorSchemer Studio.

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Quite a lot of people already know it, but for those who are hearing about this service for the first time, this post is for you.

Adobe Kuler is a color mixer with the ability to create, edit, and export various color palettes that can be used in programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

Perhaps many of you have already encountered the problem of choosing the right color palette for your project. In this case, you can use this interesting tool.

In addition to creating your own color palettes, Adobe Kuler provides the ability to use already created palettes. They are located in the "Explore" section. There you can sort them by popularity, etc.

“Explore” section of the Kuler online service

To take advantage of all the features of the service, registration is required; fortunately, it is free. It is enough to have an account (Adobe ID) on adobe.com.

When working in Adobe Photoshop, you can also use the Kuler extension. In the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop it is present by default. You can enable it via Window -> Extensions -> Kuler. (Window -> Extensions -> Kuler).

This is what the window of this extension looks like in Adobe Photoshop:

Adobe Kuler window in Photoshop

There are a lot of tools similar to Adobe Kuler. There are also online services and desktop programs that you can download and install on your computer.

The advantage of Kuler over desktop versions is ease of use. Even if you have to reinstall the operating system on your computer, you don't have to worry that the color palettes you created will disappear, and they will be saved in your account on Adobe.com.

I hope that this note will add another tool to your arsenal of useful services for creating your projects.