Up until now, every time I have to design something, anything, I automatically reach for my trusty old Color Index book. If not for the convenient vinyl colors in this little book, I probably would have destroyed the little bugger a long time ago from wear and tear.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been around the net. I’ve seen all the little color pickers and color schemers, and they’re useful but theres always something missing. None of the color schemers I’ve seen have everything.

This awesome view is what you will see when you first load up Color Scheme Designer. At first glance, it seems daunting but when you dive into it, you quickly get a feeling for the raw power of this app and how really simple it is to use; a marvel of UI.

First and foremost, you want to decide how many base colors you’re allowed to work with and then take it from there. The top left corner has the color formulas you will start from. Initially, you can choose one color and the app breaks it out into its non-clashing, complementing counterparts, as shown above. At most there can be four colors but the following depicts the initial variations, starting from my favorite shade of blue, where the black dot is on the color circle.

This results in the following color breakout schemes, which in and of themselves are useful, and with the HEX values immediately selectable, copyable and pastable. Color hex values are also accessible via mouseover:

But that’s not even all! The application allows for custom controlling of the resulting color scheme, as well as at-a-glance color value table, Voila:

And now, the defining feature this app provides is the fully interactive light and dark page previews, which I’ve generated from the Triad version of my color scheme based on my original choice of my favorite blue, in a completely eye-candy friendly application of color theory:

That’s still not the end of the features this app provides! Most notably is the ability to simulate various color deficiencies for accessibility, as well as the ability to export HTML/CSS, XML, and text as noted above.

I hope this app helps everyone out there as much as it has helped me. I realize that inspiration is in very short supply these days, and my trusty old color index has provided me countless blasts of inspiration. In light of that, this app is ground-breaking in that arena and will provide you with blasts of inspiration as well.

Are there any better color schemes or pickers that you have used or prefer? Let us know your choices in the comments. If you have any questions about color and color shemes, please add them into the comments as well.

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No matter the job scape or your skill level, you will surely be able to find the following free applications useful and effective for the development and creation of websites with your Mac computer. Without further ado, here are 6 Excellent Mac Apps for Web and Graphic Design.

Linotype Explorer

Linotype Explorer is an incredible font management app created for Mac users. You can use this app to install and “test” out new fonts on your PC. The selection of appealing fonts for your site is vital; this art of text is called Typography.

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer claims to be “The world’s most advanced online image editor”. It offers completely free access to numerous features such as photo effects, graphics, shapes, morphing, and the creation of collages. You can also integrate and share your art with social sites like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, and more. This can be an important app if the site you are creating is going to use apps.

Colorate

With Colorate you can create harmonized color palettes along with color schemes. Generate these palettes for images, photographs and more.

Simple CSS

With Simple CSS you can create Cascading Style Sheets from scratch or edit them right from the comfort of your desktop. Update styles on multiple pages all at once and reduce the data transfer usage on your page for faster loads.

Blender

Blender, open source software that allows you to create 3D animation with interactive playback leaves you with the option to optimize the style of your site with a few graphics. You can create animations with shades of colors, glossy features, soft shadows, and advanced rendering features.

JAlbum

JAlbum is a very useful app that allows you to create stylish photo galleries to publish on the web. All you have to do is simply drag selected folders into a pane where any images contained within the folder will automatically be arranged into a photo gallery. You can add several different themes and templates to enhance the appearance of your gallery, later then gain the HTML code and publish the complete gallery onto the web.

Conclusion

When designing why not take comfort with the facilitation of apps for your Mac that will allow you to boost your productivity and create better looking graphics or sites? The above 6 applications empower you with features that can meet your designing needs and make designing fun.

Which of the above apps have you used or plan to? Please MakeUseOf the comment box below and share your thoughts with us!

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Let’s search the web for an autumn-like palette (yellow, red, brown) using the following 3 services. Let’s see how the search results are like.

1. PicItUp

PicItUp is a visual image search engine that combines word-based with color based search.

Test it: search for [autumn] and choose any color from the left column (I chose yellow). Now let’s look at the results:

Impressive, isn’t it?

What the tool lacks: you can’t combine several colors to refine your search (for example you can’t search for a yellow-red palette) – you are only able to search for one color.

2. Multicolr

Unlike the above one, with the Flickr-based Multicolr (already mentioned at Make Use Of) service you can combine as many colors as you want.

Test it: choose several colors and watch how the image list changes with each color added (I combined red and yellow):

What the tool lacks:you can’t combine word-based and color-based searches with this service. You are limited with playing with colors only.

3. Etsy

Etsy, an online shop of handmade products, has developed color search for their own product database.

Test it: It’s real fun to play with. Just browse your mouse across the screen and watch various colors and same-palette products pop up.

What the tool lacks: here you are unable to either set the color option or the search term. Nonetheless the tool is such fun to use that you definitely need to try it out.

Now, what do you think could be possible practical applications for these tools?

Would you use them on a regular basis or are they just for fun?

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There are several ways that I know of to do that. The first is to open up a program and seek out its color matching dialogue and apply what I call the “gosh, that looks close enough!” method to pick out a color. Another way is to copy the item that has the color I want by hitting “Print Screen” and then opening Paint, pasting in the item from the clip board, zooming in on it and then use the ‘Pick Color’ tool. At that point I can copy down the HEX code and I am good to go.

Obviously the first method is not very exact, and the second method requires a number of steps. If you need to do this a few times a day, one heck of a lot of time gets wasted!

So, to my great delight, Instant Eyedropper reduces all of that to one click, for free!

Once you install the free download, a new icon appears in the system tray that looks like this:

To use the tool you simply left click on the icon and then drag the mouse to the color that you want and voila! The hex code appears in the tool window. Release the mouse button and the code is now in your clipboard. Now you can return to your project and using the PhotoShop (or another graphics program) color picker tool, just drop in the code and you are done. You’ll have the exact color match.

A simple set of options is available if you right click the icon.

As you can see, you can choose from HTML, Hex, Delphi Hex, VB Hex, RGB and HSB formats.

I think that this is a really great time saver and you sure can’t beat the price!

Do you know of any other similar color tools?

(By) Jerry Kidd is a California Real Estate Broker, blogger, educator and author of RealtyTechBytes

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