When I sit down to design a website, the first thing i need to do is identify a color palette. Most times this is dictated by the clients existing branding and other times it’s left totally up to me. If the later is the case, there are a few tools I use that make the process of coming up with a harmonious palette a snap.

COLOR SCHEMER STUDIO
The first is a software program (PC and Mac) called Color Schemer Studio, this is a complete color solution allowing you not only to create a synergistic color palette, but also allows you to build a color palette from a photograph or sample directly off anything on your screen.

Once you have a base color, you can build a color palette around that base color using the Color Wheel, Harmonies or Suggested Colors. You can fine tune your selection even further by selecting Compimentary Colors, Monochromatic, Minimalistic, Complex and a host of other palette variations.

Color Schemer Studio is $49.00 and well worth the price if you do any amount of work that involves creating or finding color. They also have a stripped down web only version that is worth taking a look at as well.

KULER
If you don’t want to spend your hard earned money on a software solution, there is another very viable option by the fine folks at Adobe, it’s a website called Kuler. Create an account at Kuler and you can not only create and save Kuler generated color palettes but also access other member generated palettes. Kuler is a very interactive site and alot of fun to play around with, best of all it’s 100% FREE.
Jump on over to kuler.adobe.com and give it a try.

It’s a known fact that color can make people happy, sad, anxious or calm, so when it comes time to pick a color palette for your website, it isn’t something to take lightly.

The psychology of color far bigger than can be covered in this short blog post, so instead let me give you the basics of web color and how to use it in all your online endeavors.

As photographers, we are use to working in RGB color and if you done any design for print, you’ve probably worked with it’s equivalent CMYK. Specifying colors for display on the web we use yet a third palette which is called Hexadecimal or HEX for short.

If you open up Photoshop and select the Color Picker, you can see all the different call outs for each palette plus two we won’t be covering here today, HSB and LAB.

The information you are looking for are the letters and numbers at the bottom of the picker which start with the pound symbol # and then are followed by a series of numbers and letters such as C0C0C0.

Web Safe Colors
You may also choose to select the Only Web Colors check box which will force you to pick one of the 216 websafe colors. Websafe colors are limited palette of colors that will display the same across all browsers and platforms. With the sophistication of computers and browses these days this isn’t as much of an issue as it was 10 years ago. so I say leave it unchecked.

A few color tips . . .

• Make sure the colors you use are complimentary to your overall branding.
• Use colors that allow your photography to stand out.
• Keep your color palette to a minimum.
• Use your brightest colors for website accents ONLY
• Remember the colors you choose have the possibility to turn viewers off, so choose your colors with caution.
• Get the opinion of friends and family on the colors you choose. See how they make them feel.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog post which will cover some of my favorite color tools.