You must be familiar with modern LCD screens, right? If you look carefully, most of them have a button to automatically change the attributes of the screen to adjust for the types of media which is being viewed: one specially tweaked for movies, another for photos, a separate one for text and there’s one we’re particularly interested about — night.

You see, working in front of a computer screen at night raises a particular concern. The fact that you’re staring at a bright screen late at night when your body is supposed to be turning in, disrupts your circadian rhythm. A bit of medical jargon coming your way — during nighttime, darkness permits the production of melatonin by the pineal gland. Melatonin causes drowsiness and in tandem with the central nervous system, controls the circadian rhythm. In layman’s term, all this means is the bright light from the LCD screen screws up your sleep-wake cycle.

That’s why there’s a customized “Night” setting on your LCD. Furthermore, there are several apps that will reduce the brightness of your screen while working at night; Shades is one example of a Mac app that will do just that. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the LCD’s reflection off a person’s face at night — it’s mostly bluish white. Technically, the specific colour temperature is 6500K; also known as daylight. That’s right. If you find it hard to fall asleep after using your computer, this is why.

F.lux addresses this issue but it does it slightly differently. Instead of reducing brightness per se, it actually warms the colours you see on your screen and imitates the lighting in the room during nighttime. It’s quite hard to wrap your head around until you actually use it but I’ll do my best to try and explain it.

After downloading and launching the app, it will ask you for your location and the type of lighting that’s in the room — tungsten, halogen, fluorescent or daylight. Based on the information, it calculates exactly when the sun sets in your area and adjusts the colour temperature of your screen to mimic the lighting in the room. Note that the Mac version’s interface isn’t as refined as its Windows counterpart — but it doesn’t matter very much because all of the time, the app is absolutely unobtrusive. There are no pop-ups and you won’t notice it running.

Here’s a short clip to show you how seamless the colour change is. I have to apologize for the video’s quality. The warming effect isn’t visualized in screencasts and I had to resort to using a digicam. The focus is invariably off. The point here is to show you that F.lux can actually warm the screen up quite a bit to compensate for the lighting conditions, especially if the room is lit with halogen or tungsten lamps. I can assure you that the colour changes evenly across the screen, even though it looks “top heavy” in the video.

I’ve been using F.lux for a while and I cannot instinctively tell when the warming appears. It’s a natural transition, which I appreciate. It can also be temporarily disabled in the menu bar to work on colour-sensitive projects. One more thing I have to stress: using F.lux doesn’t mean that you will fall straight to sleep once you’re off the computer and in the bed. No, there are other factors governing sleepiness. F.lux will only help reduce stimulated wakefulness and assist you in adjusting to lighting conditions.

If you find yourself skeptical, give it a try. F.lux is cross-platform and will work on Windows, Mac and Linux. If you think it works, share your experiences in the comments.

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• How To Color Calibrate Your Monitor with Calibrize (Windows) (13)
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You mounted that beautiful monitor on your wall above you desk. You are oh so proud of it. Your graphic designer buddy stops by and destroys your world with the notion your monitor is not calibrated.

You stutter and answer whhaaaaa?

Don’t worry about your geek cred being on the line because you don’t know how to color calibrate your monitor. We are here to offer you a free application called Calibrize 2.0. It will color calibrate your monitor so that colors look the same as they do on commercially calibrated machines. It messes with your Windows settings so you don’t have to do it manually. Thanks Calibrize!

There should be one standard after all so everyone’s machine can show color the same way.

The application is portable just like we love. So once your download is finished extract the portable files to your memory stick or a favorite folder on your local hard drive. When you run it for the first time, it will ask you when you want to be reminded to run it again….presumptuous ain’t it?

Go ahead and click next when you are ready or you can click help or about at the top of the application for a little more background. Hey wait! That is what you are here for isn’t it?

We are about to embark on a journey – a journey that is calibration… Are you ready? Now that you pressed next, our first step is to get the contrast and brightness straight. You start this step by setting the contrast on your monitor to the maximum level. You may have to refer to your owners manual for this one (or press the menu button on it and wing it).

Now adjust the brightness so that the black circle is the least visible. Make it so it blends in with the background like in my picture below. You want the light circle to be visible inside the white. You can adjust the contrast to get the right balance.

This may seem a little tricky but it will either be real easy or it will not work for you at all. Now we want the colors in the center circles to blend with the background color. This didn’t go so well for me as you can see below but adjust those sliders back and forth until the colors blend (better than mine at least).

That’s it! Give yourself a  pat on the back – that is how you can color calibrate your monitor. Then click save and enjoy your new color calibrated monitor. Your eyes will thank you! Your friends will thank you and your graphic designer buddies will no longer ridicule you!

You can grab this file from Calibrize. Do you have another tool you use to color calibrate monitors? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Use F.lux To Sleep Better After Late-Night Computer Activities (15)
• Verdict: Microsoft ClearType Tuner is Totally Worth It (4)
• Use One Keyboard & Mouse For Two Computers (PC Only) (28)
• The Ultimate, Free Online Color Schemer To Help Complement Your Colors (29)
• The Best Way To Effectively Clean LCD Monitor Screens (19)

There are 2 major, accepted color scales out there for consumption by human eyes – additive color and subtractive color. Subtractive color is accomplished via some sort of dyeing, screening or printing method. This is achieved by mixing either custom ink colors, or adopting a color scale , which in the subtractive realm of color, is called CMYK.

This refers to the 4 base colors used to physically, in paint or dye form, mix together to allow the formation of any color in the Cyan Magenta Yellow Black scale. This is what’s knows as CMYK – but i’m not sure why K stands for black though.

Additive color is the realm of discussion in this article. Additive color refers to the scale of color produced by adding different colors of light (rather than ink) to produce an image or color shade. In additive color, when you add the 3 primary colors together, Red Green and Blue (RGB), you get pure white, as illustrated in the additive color wheel above. Whereas if you mix together Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black inks, you get a dull brown.

Since RGB is the primary color scale for all monitors, phones, screens, laptops, anything that produces light; we will be discussing this today, as a way to empower you to be able to have brilliant images on your websites, and to get the most out of the pictures you snap in with your camera in any condition. We begin with a picture of a clearing on the ocean.

The following picture looks dull, discolored and too red. But you’d be surprised how much color information is contained in the picture, that simply needs to be brought out.

Open the image in Photoshop and you can follow along as you read the article. The tool we will be using can be found in the Image menu under Adjustments, and it’s called Levels. Otherwise it can be Hotkeyed at Ctrl-L.

The levels panel is one of the most used panels in Photoshop. You will also find Auto Levels. It is not recommended to use Auto Levels because it simply cannot replace the eye, and most importantly the taste of the viewer.

Once you have the levels panel open, there is a simple way to tell if all of the available color information is being used. The following is the levels output from the original image of the clearing on the water, showing a red discrepancy where all of the available color frequencies aren’t being utilized to their potential:

In order to correct this, and the inherent lack of color and brightness in the image, we need to give each respective primary color its own attention.

Using the Channel picker at the top we first choose the Red channel.  Next, pull the right, white slider over to the left where the dots begin to appear on the graph, indicating the channels are being used. Next pull the left, black slider over to the right to the point where the channel begins to show usage. Do this for red, green, and blue respectively.

As you make these changes, make sure the Preview checkbox is ticked so you can see your changes in action. Here’s what the process looks like, after gradually fixing red, green and blue:

Notice that even when we only fix the red channel, the picture already gets slightly brighter and richer. By bringing these sliders in, we are essentially telling Photoshop to spread the available color information over a wider range of color frequencies, and thus fill out the full spectrum more richly. Next we move on to the green channel.

At this juncture shown above, the picture starts to become richer and more saturated with color.

After finally adjusting the blue channel below, we can see the picture is at a very rich stage. Details that weren’t previously visible shine out now. What used to be shadows in the bushes are now more bushes, more leaves, more detail. And you would have never known the image contains all this information if you didn’t open the Levels panel.

Using these steps, you can take any RGB image and really pull the most out of the information that’s there.

Not all the detail in a picture is immediately visible to the naked eye. But with the Photoshop Levels tool you can maximize on detail and quality for each image.

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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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• The Best 3 Tools to Search for Images Online by Color (26)
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• Use F.lux To Sleep Better After Late-Night Computer Activities (15)

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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Sounds interesting?  Well that is what was quoted on the developer’s site and instantly caught my attention. After trying it (and ignoring minor quirks in UI and spellings) I must say I have not been disappointed.

I am talking about capture.NET. The tool is aptly called the Swiss army knife of PC tools because it just does so many things. I must confess that after looking at the site and its presentation I was a little wary of malware. However I submitted the file to VirusTotal and the results were 0 positive on 38 engines, so I went ahead and double-clicked to launch.

The tool has a Professional Version and a Free Version. The Professional version requires you to pay $15 for a license. However the Free Version is quite a handful in itself.  The features I am discussing are all available in the free version.  If you need something extra than you may like to have a look at the Professional offering.

Let’s just have a look at some of the features that capture.NET has to offer:

Screen Captures

Capture.NET allows you to take screenshots. Just like some of the commercial applications you can take screenshots by isolating windows, regions or take full screen grabs. The tool offers you a zoomed in view of the screen to help you precisely grab just the area you like.

Basic Image Editing

The captured image is then presented to you within an image editor, where you can do some basic editing. The image editing features include the ability to:

• Crop
• Rotate
• Add edge effects like shadows, torn edges, soft edges
• Convert pictures to Ascii (Cool!)
• The basic cut, copy paste, save etc

Post it Notes

Capture.NET provides you the capability to post notes on your screen. Just hit Ctrl + Shift + N and type in your note. You have now got an instant sticky note. You can also manage your sticky notes from the context menu accessed via the tray icon.

A Privacy Eraser

A mini tool that allows you to clean temporary files, the recycle bin, clipboard, cookies, MRU lists, Windows Events Logs and perform some minor tweaks like clearing the pagefile on shutdown.

A Color Picker

A great tool for web designers and programmers.  The color picker allows you to pick any color off the screen. It also provides you with sliders to generate color schemes or if you are really stuck, hit the random button to get a random color suggestion.

A File Format Convertor

This allows you to inter-convert between the various image formats. Just browse to images you wish to convert on your hard disk, select all images that you want to convert and choose the appropriate command. File Format Converter also allows you to convert chm files to html files.

A Tweaker

Tweaker allows you to perform some basic registry tricks on your system. It provides you with detailed information about your system and ready access to the device manger and the Windows System Information utility. Tweaker also has options to restore the settings for a hijacked Internet Explorer.

A Backup Expert

Backup Expert allows you to backup your mail (Outlook) as well as Internet Explorer favorites and feeds. Though honestly I missed Firefox support here.

Alarm Clock, World Time, Timer and Time Synchronization

Apart from the basic alarm clock functionality, the tool also offers count-down/count-up timer and time synchronization with a NTP server. You can also view the different time zones and time differences readily accessible through keyboard shortcuts.

Some Other Utilities

There are plenty of other features offered by capture.NET which I would have to leave for you to explore yourself. Some of them are great for programmers like the customizable Ruler or the Window Spy which gives you important information about windows, buttons, and other UI elements. Indispensable if you are into writing Autohot key scripts, Windows Programming or something similar. Others like the font viewer, calendar and lunar phases are more for your general use.

Definitely give it a try and let us know which ones you liked or if you use any other tools for accomplishing similar tasks.

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Search Color Schemes (Use Words)

Picking out a color scheme for your website? Not sure how to describe the actual colors you need? Try out ‘Instant Color Schemes’.

This excellent free service makes it easy for anyone to find an entire matching color scheme simply by typing in a word. For example, just search for ’sunset’, and color schemes related to ’sunset’ will be made available on the spot.

“Instant Color Schemes” makes full use of Yahoo’s image search API. How it works is that they take 5 related images from Yahoo Image Search and then show the most prominent 6 colors from each image and then find related colors to come up with the color schemes.

After some testing, it does work out pretty well in most cases. It did give me abnormal results once in a while (along with yellow and orange, pink and grey colors were displayed to me when I searched for ‘curry’!), but it looks to be a good product overall.

Search Color Schemes (Use Images)

Lost for words? If you are, you can let your favorite image do the talking. Sometimes words don’t cut it. This is especially true when you’re trying to pick colors to match certain objects, a painting or a statue for instance. Just upload a picture to Color Palette Generator and it will break down the key colors from within that photo and allow you to obtain a color scheme from that image.

Also of note is the fact that the source code for this project is available for free which means you can grab it, change and modify the code and put it to good use as well.

So there you go, two tools which will help you make the right decision about colors – all the time.

You might also want to check out The Best 3 Tools to Search for Images Online by Color by Ann.

How do you pick color schemes? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The Best 3 Tools to Search for Images Online by Color (26)
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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?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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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

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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