Color Palette Tools for Designers

Choosing a color scheme can seem like a simple decision, but this isn’t always the case. Color decisions should be made carefully as the impacts are significant and far reaching. For web designers, the color scheme will impact the entire web design. Fortunately, there are a number of helpful tools and resources that can be used in situations where you’re struggling to find the right palette.

In this article we’ll look at 19 different resources that are outstanding to have on hand. Each one is a little bit different. Some will allow you to browse color schemes and palettes created by other users, some will help you to create your own palette with help, some will allow you to see what colors appear in a photograph, and others will do different things.

Kuler

Kuler, from Adobe, is an excellent resource for browsing a huge selection of color palettes. You can also create your own palettes, or use Kuler directly from Adobe software like Photoshop and Illustrator.

ColourLovers

ColourLovers is a community site for designers. One aspect of the site is the color palette gallery where users have submitted over a million palettes that can be browsed for your own inspiration.

COPASO

COPASO is color software from ColourLovers.

ColorSchemer

The ColorSchemer is an excellent resource for browser color schemes.

Kolur

With Kolur you can browse color palettes in a different way than with other color scheme tools. Kolur shows images or photos and along with the color palettes for a different visual.

Color Calculator

The Color Calculator from Sessions College is an interactive color wheel that helps designers select HTML, RGB, or CMYK colors, and identifies color harmonies and schemes.

Contrast-A

Contrast-A is a really helpful tool for identifying accessible color combinations. It checks color combinations for sufficient contrast and displays the results according to WCAG 2.0 (Luminance Ratio) as well as the results according to older accessibility guidelines, WCAG 1.0 (Difference in Brightness and Color).

4096 Color Wheel

4096 Color Wheel can help you to find color schemes while identifying web safe and web smart colors. Just hover over a color on the wheel and it will show web safe, web smart, and web unsafe versions.

Color Blender

With Color Blender you will pick two colors, choose the number of midpoints, and it will generate those midpoint colors for you.

Color Scheme Designer

When you’re looking for help creating a full color scheme, Color Scheme Designer can be a great resource. Choose the type of scheme you want (monochromatic, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic, or accented analogic), click on a color and the tool will provide you with other colors to complete the scheme.

ColoRotate

ColoRotate can be used online or as an iPad app. You can browse through a huge sample of color palettes, or create your own with the help of a 3D color wheel.

ColorBlender

ColorBlender is a pretty helpful tool if you have one color as a starting point. You can also browse color palettes generated by other users.

Color Wizard

With Color Wizard you will enter a base color and the tool will generate other colors to complete your scheme. It will let you choose between monochromatic, analogous, triadic, tetradic, complimentary, an split complimentary schemes. You can go back and forth from the different types of schemes easily, and you can also adjust your base color and the schemes will adjust on the fly.

ColorExplorer

Color Explorer includes a few different color tools. You can register and save your own palettes, browse color libraries, use the color matching tool, and more.

Colorspire

Colorspire is a simple tool for creating your own color palettes. Click on a color on the wheel and it will provide other colors to complete the color scheme.

ColRD

ColRD helps you to create your own color palettes, and you can also browse colors, palettes, and patterns created by other users.

DeGraeve Color Palette Generator

The DeGraeve tool is simple, but useful. You enter the URL of a photo or image and it will create a palette of prominent colors from the photo or image.

Color Hunter

With Color Hunter you can also create palettes from photos, but you can also browse the palettes that others have created from photos.

ColorCombos.com

ColorCombos.com allows you to create your own color combinations, and you can browse a huge library of existing combinations.

 

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/color-palette/

14 New and Free PSDs for Web Designers

Designers are always looking for new design elements to use in their projects, and that’s why it’s very important to have a good library to count on. To help you increase your resources, today we gathered 14 new free PSDs for you. From icons to UI controls, and buttons, there’s a lot of useful elements here. Enjoy.

50 Mini Icons (PSD)

Google Maps UI Controls (PSD)

Apple iPhone Chat Bubbles (PSD)

Dashboard UI Design

Free iPad Mini PSD

Add/Remove Circular Buttons (PSD)

Slider PSD

free PSD – light grey UI kit

Mobile Devices Icons V 2.0 [PSD]

Social Icon Set

Circular Player Widget

Grooveshark Search

Sign In

Dark Chart UI Kit

http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/14-new-and-free-psds-for-web-designers

Beautiful Houses: Glen 2961 In Cape Town

I have been doing the Beautiful Houses post for a while now, and I am also a big fan of architecture. And although I browse architecture related sites looking for inspiring houses, every single day I get impressed with new architectural master pieces.

 
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Web Revenge! Dirty tricks for Halloween

My therapist says I’m obsessed with revenge. He’ll be sorry he said that! It’s not that I’m paranoid about all of the people who are against me; I just want to make them all pay dearly.

I truly believe that the web is the greatest revenge weapon invented since the burning bag of dog poo on someone’s doorstep, and the novelty squirting flower filled with sulphuric acid.

Of course, I’m kidding about being so enamored with revenge. People just misunderstand my desire for social justice in our unjust society, world and universe, just like there’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone tightly so they can’t get away.

Sometimes revenge is needed, so to be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. You just need to fight fire with fire, although, to be fair, the fire department does fight fire with water.

Let’s face it, there are two things about human beings. The first is that we never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public. The second is that those who don’t learn how to act in public are social outcasts and turn to causing problems for others on the internet.

Well, Halloween is here and so it’s time for Trick or Treat! But why go out in the cold autumn weather and be a witch with a coat or a skeleton with a parka? You can have trick-filled fun and in front of a warm computer and not have to worry about weight gain or cavities from a huge bag of candy.

Inspiring Package Design

Here at WDL, we believe that you can find inspiration in a lot of different sources. And we also believe that packaging is a great source of inspiration. It is amazing the work designers deliver in packages, they have to design something eye catching, appealing and still include a good amount of info about the product. So it’s nice to take a closer look at packaging to observe details such as colors, proportions, textures, and typography. I think you’ll enjoy this collection of beautiful package design.

Eléia x Bast

25+ Fresh HTML5 Websites for Inspiration

HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, HTML5 includes many new features to make web forms a lot easier to write, and a lot more powerful and consistent across the Web. 

Following up on our previous list of html5 Website – here's some more fresh HTML5 websites for inspiration!

Frank Digital

How YouTube can Boost Your Website Traffic

One of the most popular sites on the Internet is YouTube. Not only is it entertaining, but it is also a great way to boost traffic to your website. However, if you are going to make the most of YouTube, you need to know what rules to adhere to. Here are some tips that you can use to promote your website as well as your products while getting free traffic from YouTube.

Beautiful Responsive Websites

Smartphone usage has spiked since the iPhone release in 2007. Nowadays with Android, iOS and other smartphones out there it's impossible to not think about making web sites friendly to different screen sizes. We know that these phones are capable of a lot of cool things and you can always zoom in when checking regular sites, but if the technology allows us we must take advantage to provide the best user experience to our users. To illustrate this a little bit better we picked 10 responsive websites that were a source of inspiration for the new Abduzeedo design.

Check out this websites and resize the browser to see how they behave in different screen sizes. It's always good to see how designers manage to adapt the navigation or big promo areas, especially for the mobile version.

Security Tips for using Social Networking Websites

Over the past decade social networking websites have become a cornerstone of the internet and given people the opportunity to close great distances between each other, so is it really such a surprise just how ingrained social networking has become in our lives?

Going online and logging on to our favorite social networking websites to get updates from friends, bonding with family, and catching up on the latest news has become a big part of everyone’s daily habits. The benefits of being able to connect with others has even prompted businesses to tap into social networks as leverage against the competition. Most businesses have even engaged the services of advertising strategists to increase their popularity, but it is not enough. Online marketers recommend hiring a social media agency to make marketing efforts easier through social marketing online.

Free eBook: The WordPress Blogging Guide

It’s been nearly four years since I discovered WPHacks – or Hack WordPress as it was called back then – and it was here Kyle was kind enough to offer me the chance to have my very first blog post published. At the time I was using WordPress to power a small video games review site I ran with some friends, but when I found Hack WordPress and by extension the whole WordPress community, I was immediately hooked. This was where I wanted to be.

After a couple of posts here I decided to create my own “WordPress tutorials” site, which I called WPShout. Since founding the site in March 2009, I’ve nurtured the site into a 3000 strong community for WordPress enthusiasts. And in that time, whilst building that community, I’ve learned a thing or two about blogging. I’ve been on a journey, if you will, and that journey started right here.

So I thought it’d be fitting to come back here once more just to let you know that I’ve recently published a 45 page free eBook on WPShout and you should totally download it right now.

Those forty five pages of The WordPress Blogging Guide contain six thousand words of content, which are broken down into three sections:

1. Blogging essentials
2. Monetization
3. Social & Analytics

The book’s release post tells you more, should you wish for a more detailed synopsis.

That’s all from me. I just want to thank Kyle again for starting me off on my blogging journey and graciously allowing me to return to publish this short piece. And of coursedon’t forget to download the eBook. It’s free!

How to Add New Default Avatars in WordPress

About 3 years ago, we showed you how to change the default gravatar in WordPressusing the code method. In this article, we will show you how to add new default avatars in WordPress using a plugin, so you can do so without editing a single line of code.

Design a Halloween Pumpkin Wallpaper in Photoshop

Halloween is near! So let’s take a pumpkin image, carve it up, and light it for this coming holiday. You’ll learn how to get this nice effect on any pumpkin picture, how to play with the colors, apply some layer blending modes to skip the extraction process, and more.

Final Image Preview

Before we get started, let’s take a look at the image we’ll be creating. Want access to full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psdtuts+ PLUS for just $19/month. You can view the final image preview below or view a larger version here.

21 Examples of Great Typography in Web Design

Typography is certainly a very important element of web design. A website must have a good typographic foundation in order to communicate, explain, and even allow users to navigate its content. From typographic menus, to copy writing and headlines, good typography will make a big difference in any web design. Today we gathered some excellent examples of how to use typography to present content in an effective an beautiful way. In this collection, you’ll see that no matter if it’s a complete typographical design or simply big headlines, typography can play a big role in a web design.

New Zealand Opera

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: November 2012

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over four years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.
This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for November 2012. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

• All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,

• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

(Smashing's side note: Have you already pre-ordered the brand new Smashing Mobile Book? The book features the most important things that you need to know as a designer or developer to create beautiful and rich mobile experiences. Get your book today!)

Continue >> Smashing Magazine

Create A Skateboard Illustration With Mixed Medias

As most kids born in the 90s I was very influenced by skateboarding and was a "skater" myself. I always loved skateboard art and I remember going with my friends to skate shops to see the shapes from brands like Santa Cruz, Flip, Powell Peralta and others. I must admit that this art had a huge influence on my work and here's just a little tutorial in tribute to that.

Warm ups

If you're not really into skateboard art, I would suggest you to take a look at Jim Phillips artworks, he's like the father of skateboard art. Besides Jim, you should also check guy like Billy Argel, Gunsho, Pablo Etchepare and Diego Medina, whose work is intricately linked with the skateboard culture.
Ok, enough talking, so what are we going to do today? Quite simple: A "Cool" in melting green-ish letters, old school style.
Let's begin with some warm ups, as you may already know, pointilism can be really tiresome and messy, so let's make some simple exercises. Make a circle, a triangle and a square, start filling it with dots doing the following movements: circular for the ellipse, triangular for the triangle and side to side for square. That way you will be warming up your wrist and also testing your dot control, try it at least two to three times If you never tried this technique before. Do it slowly and don't put too much pressure or you may get your wrist injured because of the repetition. This technique will be used on the following in order to give some depth on the letters.

You probably already know hard gradients are, nowadays they are mostly used on vector art and t-shirt art, as some printing methods require few colors. If you've never used before, try this simple exercise: make a three color gradation, like the blue one I did, then try drawing some forms with the darker color, make a reflex with the medium color and a little reflex with the brighter. As you can see, from a certain distance your eye will assimilate a gradient. Try as many forms as you want, then make patterns to see the effect they have on the illustrations. This technique will help later on giving depth to the letters.

Continue >> Abduzeedo

Abstract Photo Manipulation In Photoshop CS 6

The new promotional images for Photoshop CS6 are really amazing, they were created by Alberto Seveso, an incredible digital artist from Italy. Seveso has been pushing the limits of creativity and the use of Photoshop for a long time and we are great admirer of his work. Intrigued with artworks we decided to create something inspired by his work.

Step 1

It's amazing to see that such amazing images are most of the times done by simple techniques. This tutorial will show you how to achieve similar effect using Photoshop with Masks and Layer Effects. It's an intermediate tutorial but I am sure you will have so much fun doing as we did.

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I am using 2880x1800 pixels for mine After that let's use a photo of a beautiful girl. The one I am using is from YuriyZhuravov and it's title Beautiful smiling woman portrait on white background. Courtesy of Shutterstock.

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12 Groovy Music Website Design For Inspiration

Music is one source of creative inspiration, there are times that we rely on music to boost our creativeness. Music has been a flavor of our daily life, it can be in our home, in our car, office lounge and not to forget our little tiny media player.

Somehow, website that are related to music shows creativity and rare approach in design. Here are some website design which I handpicked for your inspiration.

tunebow

Free PSD Template: StunningApp

I’m glad to release my first free PSD template here. The name of the template is StunningApp. This free PSD is a website layout for a iPhone app website. You can use to showcase your own iPhone app or modify it to use it as a landing page for other purposes.

25 Free Photoshop Actions For Time Saving

Photoshop is an awesome tool for adding life and spice to ordinary photos. But beginner might find editing photos in Photoshop tough and time consuming. This is where Photoshop Actions can help them out. These are a series of tasks which can be played back on a file or a batch of files menu commands, palette options and tool actions, etc. These actions make editing pictures in Photoshop really easy and quick. They automate the common processes, thus saving time and ensuring efficiency.

10 Effective And Fresh Premium jQuery Sliders

In the recent times Jquery has become very popular among the people. It can be defined as a java script library which is also multi browser and has a lot of important purposes one of the major ones being to be able to simplify the client side scripting of HTML . This was released In the year 2006 and even today it is the most common java script library that is in used today.

Free Icon Font: Pictonic Cube

Pictonic Cube is a free icon font set that includes the most useful UI elements for your user interface design projects. As a font, it’s very flexible. For example, you can manipulate the icons with CSS properties (e.g. color, size, shadow, etc.).

Custom Login Form Styling

Styling a good login form is always been a very difficult task for designers.

Today almost always web service or application requires a login form and in this tutorial from Codrops, Hugo Giraudeltalks about the importance of a good design form.

He uses CSS3 and HTML5 techniques to perform a beautiful and modern login form.

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