Of course, the tool only works within the confines of the software offering it. But what if you could go beyond that, instead extracting color directly from your surroundings? LifeDropper makes that possible.

Augmented Reality Comes To Image Editing

LifeDropper is a creative eyedropper program, but easy to explain. It simply uses your phone’s camera as a means of extracting information about a targeted object’s color.

When you open the app you’re presented with a camera view devoid of any buttons. Most of the image is shaded, indicating that it is not being used, but in the middle of the screen you’ll find a transparent square with a targeting reticule. LifeDropper will extract color information only from what’s inside that square. When you’ve lined up the object you want to sample from, just tap on the display. Presto!

The color that you’ve sampled will appear on a new screen, along with information that will help you input that color into whatever image editing software you prefer. This includes the color translated into red/green/blue numerals, hexadecimal, and more.

In addition to this, you can save any color you sample. Saved colors can be reviewed later by accessing the app’s menu and then opening the Tag Gallery. There is also a Share feature, but as far as I can tell, this only lets you share the app – it does not appear to share the color that you’ve sampled as well.

Solid Colors Only, Please

LifeDropper is an incredibly useful tool, but it does have one notable limitation – an inability to extract colors from objects that have a pattern or otherwise are not a solid color. The developer cites jeans as one example, but I also found that most patterned fabrics share this problem, and I also couldn’t extract color from my pets!

Although this seems like an odd problem, it’s actually quite sensible. LifeDropper performs some mathematical magic to convert color information from the real world into something digitally usable, and an objective with extreme color variations will throw that algorithm for a loop.

You can combat this limitation by decreasing the active area from which a color is sampled. Open the menu, go to settings, and then open the Number of Pixels option. There are number of choices, including as little as one pixel. This seems to reduce the problem, but does not entirely solve it (even at a sample of one pixel, jeans remain an elusive subject).

Conclusion

The uses for the LifeDropper eyedropper program are clever. Let’s say, for example, that you were a business owner and you wanted to create a website. Instead of relying on a graphics or web designer to come up with a digital approximation of the colors that represent your business, you could take color information directly from reality.

Graphics designers will also enjoy the save feature of the app, since you’ll be able to add to your color palette everywhere you go. If you see something that looks cool, you can whip out your phone and sample color from it on the spot.

Do you have an idea for a creative way to use this app? Let us know in the comments.

For starters, Solarized isn’t aimed at one particular editor or piece of software. You can get Solarized for Vim, Emacs, IntelliJ and six other editors, for four different terminal emulators, and even for Mutt (a console email client). It is also available as a color palette for Photoshop or GIMP.

Solarized author, Ethan Schoonover, did not just pick colors he felt were pretty. Instead, he used something called Lab color space to figure out the exact differences in lightness various screen elements should have, and selected the colors based on fixed color wheel relationships (some of the hues are analogous, some are Triad-based, etc.). Sure, the result is pretty, but it’s also very readable.

The Solarized color schemes are available both with a light and dark background. Here’s what the light-background variation looks like:

And here’s the dark variation of the same file:

You can see how similar both modes are. They feel like one color scheme, but both are very readable. In fact, they’re both readable to the same exact degree: they have symmetric lightness differences, so switching between dark and light background retains the same perceived amount of contrast between scheme elements.

It’s a minimalistic scheme, with just sixteen colors. The number of colors can even be brought down further, to just five specific hues, and it would still be quite readable.

Another thing that’s very impressive about Solarized is the presentation. Most color schemes are just a single text file with hardly any documentation. Solarized has a gorgeous webpage (colorized according to the scheme, of course), where the author lays down his reasoning for the scheme and its advantages in excruciating detail. The two screenshots above were taken from that very page, where you can find many other screenshots showing different file types in Vim, as well as many other applications.

I’ve been using Solarized for a few weeks now, mainly in Vim via Putty. For this particular scenario, installation was not trivial: I’ve had to configure Solarized for PuTTY, and then configure it for Vim as well. Even so, the colors I get on my own screen seem somewhat different from what I see on the Solarized website. I do like the look I ended up with, but you’ll have to agree it doesn’t look exactly like the beautiful screenshots above:

That’s the only drawback really. If you just use a single application (say, GVim or another local text editor), you should have no problem installing Solarized on your system. But if you need to get it working via PuTTY and Vim, you’re in for a bit of a challenge. Having said that, if any of you manage to replicate the exact Solarized look using Putty/Vim, I’d love to hear about it in the comments — perhaps you can teach me a thing or two!

If you aren’t, taking the pains to carefully (and intermittently) calibrating your monitor is just as important. The colors on screen may not be the exact match of what they actually are. Just imagine that you took a beautiful panoramic snap and downloaded it to your computer. But the blue of the sky or the green of the grass doesn’t resemble the one you saw through the viewfinder.

Today, it’s a lot about watching online movies, snapping digital photos and sharing image files. Color calibrating monitors is important to get as close to the real thing as possible. Graphic professionals will pick up serious apps for the job, but we laymen can rely on our eyes, our judgment, and some online help from these simple monitor calibration websites.

Photo Friday

Photo Friday’s monitor calibration tool is a webpage which help you adjust the brightness and contrast of your screen. The idea is to tweak the monitor settings (or buttons), so that you can clearly distinguish the transition of tones from true black to true white. The instructions start off by telling you to dim the lights and hit F11 for viewing the grayscale chart in full screen mode.

Screencheck

Screencheck is a simple webpage that helps you to see if your screen is set to the correct brightness and color. The top bar checks the tone with a white to black band. The bottom bar displays a smooth RGB spectrum to check for color breaks.

Display Calibration

DisplayCalibration.com is not a great looking site but it is more than a useful one. The site is not updated but you can use the online screen calibration tools placed in three pages ““ Brightness and Contrast, Color Depth, and Screen Resolution.

The Lagom LCD Monitor Test Pages

The site includes a series of test images that start from checking contrast to checking for response times of your monitor. It is recommended to go through the tests in the order they are placed. The developer also states that you can put the images on a Flash drive and try them in the computer store when shopping for a LCD monitor. A 120KB ZIP file download is included.

Online Monitor Test

This website has a range of interactive tests to fix your screen colors. You can start off with a test that’s similar to the one we covered first. Next, the Color Range test checks if your monitor can smoothly produce color gradients. From the menu you can pick different color charts.

Look for “˜ghost images’ or image trails in the Trailing test. Move the box across the screen and check if any trails are produced. The controls and options to change the color and shape of the box are placed at the bottom.

The Homogenuity test helps to pinpoint damaged pixels and faulty monitors with backlight bleeding. 1:1 Pixel mapping and testing for blurring of Text are the last two tests on the lineup. While the former is not so much an issue with LCD monitors, the latter is worth a tryout if you feel that screen text is not crisp enough. There’s another test for dual monitors that can be used to test input lag on two monitors.

Before you start off with calibrating your monitor, you can dive into Windows Display Properties and finalize some of the settings. Set the optimal screen resolution and refresh rates for your model of the monitor. All monitors these days have a high color quality of 32 bits. With the basics in place, you can set about fine-tuning your monitor settings with monitor calibration apps.

You monitor also might have a calibration software. Windows 7 comes with a Display Color Calibration tool. You can access it from Start – Control Panel -Appearance and Personalization ““ Display. For older OS like Windows Vista and XP, online apps or third party software like Calibrize could be handy. Setting the right color and brightness of your monitor is not difficult. All you need is a good eye. Do you regularly calibrate your monitor? Which is your favored method?

Image credit: Shutterstock

If you are a web designer, or want to be one or you simply like to match different colors to see how they look; play around with these online color palette generators.

A color palette in its simplest definition is a range of colors that’s used to make a graphic or a colored work visually consistent. Take the example of our own website which has been designed with a color combination that’s uniform across the site. An example of a specific palette is the web safe color palette (a set of 216 colors) that makes them appear the same across browsers and OS.

ColoRotate

ColoRotate helps to mix and match colors in 3D. The flash-based website lets you browse the already created color palettes or adjust them according to your tastes. You can use the color diamond (or use the slider mode) to play with different color combos and create new palettes. The joysticks make for easy adjustment of color, contrast, and tint, or for toggling foreground and background colors. The palette preview also has a dropdown that allows for various vision deficiencies.

COLOURlovers

Call this a community for color lovers. Or a “˜colorful’ community because it is all about creative people sharing color palettes and patterns. The website is well organized with sections like Channels (which showcases color usage for weddings, home, fashion etc), and Trends (an index for what’s happening with color in different media). But for more hands on work, check Tools where you can create palettes and patterns. You might be interested in Themeleon which lets you create custom themes for your Twitter profile.

kuler

One of our readers suggested the Adobe tool in our How to Search for the Perfect Color Scheme post. You can create cool variations from an image or from the color wheel. If you hit a white wall, you can browse through the many color themes with cooler names already on the site. Try out Pulse where you can browse through thousands of color themes with just a click on a histogram or the color wheel. You can straightaway copy the color values to your clipboard.

Color Scheme Designer

Color Scheme Designer is an online color tool that makes it real easy to design the color scheme of your website or blog. Decide on the type of color scheme you want your site to be based on and then pick and choose the colors from the color wheel. Each color scheme presents the primary colors and their complementary colors. You can get a feel from the preview and also adjust it according to text, light and dark backgrounds. Check out our thorough review on Color Scheme Designer.

Colr

Using your mouse and the site’s random Flickr image (or your own), you can generate color schemes. You can pick and drop colors to further fine tune your scheme. You can also fetch colors from websites by giving a URL.

Toucan

The color palette editor is one of Aviary’s online tools. You can choose up to 20 colors per palette using color combos or an uploaded image. You can import images from Flickr, Picasa, Tumblr, and Facebook. Import from a URL is also provided but I was getting an unknown error with it. Toucan also lets you check and preview the final palette using a dropdown with color deficiency options.

Color Palette FX

If you want to create a color palette from an uploaded image, Color Palette FX is one of the simpler tools going around. Upload a JPEG or PNG and the palette gets made for you. Sort palettes by hue, saturation, brightness, or color frequency and then export them to your graphical application.

Colorjack

The online tool starts off with numerous color blocks which you can mouse over and expand the palettes to edit them. Other tools include Color Galaxy (set of 27 color databases), Color Sphere (for the right color schemes and harmony), Color Studio (create your own colors), Color Conversions Library, and more.

Color Explorer

Color Explorer comes with a quiver full of digital color tools. You can pick a color along with its minute variations. You can browse through common color libraries that have samples of popular print colors as well as RGB colors. You can pick a base color and match colors around it and automate it using the various algorithms given. But what could be of real value are the color analysis and conversion tools that help to match your palette to the prevalent standards and different color systems.

Genopal

Just like the last web tool, Genopal too gives a color designer a choice of tools like a palette creation tool from images and words. The fun and interesting one is a recoloring tool which lets you apply color to any uploaded image. For example, Pic2Graphics lets you transfer “˜color mood’ between two images.

Because our eyes can sometimes lie to us, these online color palette tools help to mix “˜n match and tryout a lot of options before you settle down on the right one. Which is the color tool of your choice? Let us know.

Image: geishaboy500

It’s for this reason that devices like the Kindle and the Nook are fast gaining popularity. Rather than utilizing the backlit screens we know from computers and cell phones, these devices mimic paper. The result is easier to read in the sun, and is in general easier on the eyes than a screen.

It’s not practical to give up traditional screens on conventional computers, however. Windows and Mac users have the option of using F.lux to offset this, and Varun wrote about last year in an article called Get Better Monitor Lighting That Feels Good To Your Eyes and Jackson followed up with an article called Use F.lux To Sleep Better After Late-Night Computer Activities.

Linux users, it seems, were left out of the fun: F.lux does not work on Linux. That’s where Redshift comes in. The program is currently in development, and currently requires the user to have no fear of the command line, but don’t worry: it’s not too hard to use.

What It Does

If you’re not familiar with F.lux you probably don’t know what Redshift does. Essentially this application will, as it gets darker outside, alter your computer’s display and give everything a red tinge. There’s a reason for that. The type of lighting that is around you changes as it gets darker outside. Sunlight is very white, but artificial lighting tends to be more red. As such, if you read something on a piece of paper it will look white to your eyes during the day and reddish at night.

You don’t notice this because your brain automatically balances the difference. Your computer monitor, being backlit, is constantly white. Because of this, looking at your computer at night can hurt your eyes and cause you to lose sleep. Redshift helps offset this.

Installation

You’ll find really simple instructions for installing this amazing software over at Ubuntu blog OMG Ubuntu, which recently featured Redshift.

If you’re not a Ubuntu user you can find generic instructions over at the official Redshift page. Heck, you’ll even find instructions for installing Redshift in Windows (but I’d advise Windows users to stick with F.lux for now).

Set Up Your Gnome Clock

Once you’ve got Redshift installed you’re going to want to set up your Gnome clock so it knows your location. Why? Because it might simplify using Redshift for you.

Click the clock in your tray and you’ll see your calendar. You’ll also see your “Locations” at the bottom of this pop-up. If you’ve already configured your location this way congratulations: you can skip this step. If not go ahead and add your location. The dialogue is simple enough, as you can see.

Once you’ve done this you can launch Redshift.

Using Redshift

The first time you use Redshift, it’s a good idea to do so in a terminal – this will tell you about any errors the program may encounter. Open your terminal and type “gtk-redshift“. Assuming all is well, you should find this new notification applet in your system tray:

If not, you’ll probably see a request for you to manually input your latitude and longitude. Yeah, this program has a few bugs still, but don’t worry too much: doing this is easy. Go back to the configuration screen you used to set your location above and write down your latitude and longitude. Then type a new command that consists of “gtk-redshift” followed by “-l” followed by your latitude and longitude separated only by a colon.

For example, if you live in Copenhagen, Denmark, type this command:

gtk-redshift -l 55.7:12.6

Redshift will now launch Redshift, forcing your location onto it.

Do you want an indicator applet to run in the background without the indicator applet? Easy. Just use the command “redshift” instead of “gtk-redshift” and voila: trayless redshift.

At Boot

Want Redshift to start when your computer does? Easy enough. Just copy whatever command you managed to type to get Redshift working, then click “System,” then “Preferences,” then “Startup Programs.” Add a new program, using your command in the “Command” box and whatever you like for the rest.

Conclusion

I love reading articles from The Economist before going to bed. I do this using Readability, the service I described last week as being Safari’s “Reader” for Chrome and Firefox. I do find that I sleep better after this using Redshift than I do without, so try it out for yourself.

And if you do try it out for yourself please do share with us how it worked out for you. Also share any tips you might have for using Redshift, because it’s always great to learn.