Digital Color Aiding Free Widgets

For those of us that are Mac users the OSX dashboard can be a real time saver. An earlier post titled, Digital Photoshop Color Aids, focused on useful color extensions available for Adobe Photoshop. The information presented here features widgets that can also be very helpful in choosing and using color. And they are available without having to boot up an application. Some are standalone widgets while others connect to websites with information, trends and user color communities with worldwide-contributed color schemes.

Stand Alone Widgets

Color Theory aka. ColorJack

Color Theory is an online Color Scheme Generator used by illustrators, designers, and interior decorators. It’s an interactive color theory visualizer in the shape of a sphere. It also includes achromatic simulation. The sphere uses basic color theory in order to automatically provide you with visually appealing colors. . The extremely versatile color sphere operates in several modes including the standard ones like analogous, complementary, etc. and four, five and six color configurations. The color sphere can be set up for different human vision conditions such as protanopy (night blindness, tritanopy (color blindness), and several others.

Chroma Color Converter

Chroma is an OS X Dashboard utility for converting colors between HSV, RGB, and HEX formats, including 256 integer, percentage, and floating point variations. Added colors can be saved to the swatch library, which can then be exported or imported via the system clipboard. Colors are displayed using RGB, HSV, and HEX values.

RGB Converter

The RGB Converter is a simple dashboard widget to convert between RGB color values and HEX equivalents. For creative professionals, RGB Converter can manage individual components values or a comma-separated string of values to display a color by it’s RGB or HEX code. The wheel instantly updates the color of each component and the resultant color. Since it runs as an Apple Dashboard widget, it's quick and always at your fingertips.

ColourMod

ColourMod is an extremely flexible color picker that allows for users to select any color that they want. Its appearance and function is very similar to the standard square field color pickers used in Adobe software, but it is a standalone widget. Fine adjustments can be made via text field inputs or by simply dragging the color sliders. ColourMod outputs and inputs Hex, RGB, CMYK, and HSV values and converts between the four.

HSLider

Targeted at developers, this dashboard widget uses HSL sliders and plain text fields to tweak colors. Clicking on a color field displays the HEX, RGB, or HSL number, which can be copied to the clipboard with a single click. HEX values can be displayed in full or abbreviated notation.

Picker

Piker is perhaps the simplest and most compact widget that displays web-safe colors. The color preview field updates instantly when you place the selection arrow over one of the mini color fields. Clicking on a color field displays the hex number, which can be copied to the clipboard.

ColorSafe

ColorSafe is a dashboard widget that offers you a web-safe color picker. The display is all inclusive for the 216 color web-safe palette. ColorSafe was designed specifically for web artists, designers and developers that restrict there color choices to  web-safe colors. The safe icon displays the color that the selection arrow hovers over. The HEX value is also displayed.

Community Based Widgets

Kuler®

Kuler is available as a dashboard widget from Adobe. Photoshop and Illustrator users should be familiar with Kuler, which is an extension in those programs. It’s a well-designed, very useful Web-based color picking app. The widget can access color schemes from the Kuler.com site to display. It’s possible to filter search the most downloaded, highest rated, and latest color schemes contributed by other users in the Kuler community. Kuler allows the user to search the tags to search for existing color palettes, each scheme in the widget provides a direct link to that scheme in Kuler, making it very easy to modify the scheme, which can be saved online at Kuler for future reference and sharing. One very nice advantage is the ability to create a color scheme in the widget, save it, and then access it through the Kuler extension in Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe programs.

Kuler webpage. http://kuler.adobe.com

Color Schemer Galleria

ColorSchemer Galleria is a free dashboard widget that allows you to browse all of the schemes in the ColorSchemer Gallery. Like Kuler, the widget connects to the ColorSchemer community of color scheme contributors to the colorschemer.com website. Users can browse, search, and download from over a million color palettes right from the linked website. The Galleria widget displays each color scheme on an isolated black background, allowing viewers to get an optimal view of the colors.

Color Schemer Galleria webpage. http://www.colorschemer.com

COLOURlovers

The COLOURlovers website is a resource that monitors and publishes color trends in use internationally. The dashboard widget displays color palettes and connects to the website. You can create a profile, add favorite palettes and colors, and add comments to posted colors. COLOURlovers gives users a place to compare color palettes, submit news, and read color related articles and interviews The information can be used in illustrations and designs for editorial publications, ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification. Once registering as a “colour lover” and you can submit colors and create color palettes. Searching for colors and palettes can be based on color names, numbers, and Pantone numbers.

COLOURlovers webpage. http://www.colourlovers.com

Digital Color Perception & Deception

Our perception of color as we see it in the real world is continuously changing. Color perception is influenced by light source, time of day, atmosphere, form, reflection, and other colors surrounding it. Even digitally, it is impossible to see a particular color without some form of influence interacting with it. It may be the room a monitor is situated in, or even the brightness and saturation of the monitor itself. Color is realized through experience. There are many factors that physically influence the appearance of color, but the most paradoxical one may be our own judgment. 

Mood

Mood is an interesting concept. Illustrators and designers speak about the importance of creating a mood, which is often used to determine a color scheme and individual color choices. With regard to color, the term “mood” can be interpreted from two very paradoxical viewpoints. There is the mood that is intended by the color choices made by an artist in a work of art. This should be referred to as “tone”, although mood is now a more common term for describing an effect in a color scheme. Mood is not only a way to describe a physical state, but it also classifies an emotional one, therein lies the paradox. In other words, we as humans have moods. Moods exert a tremendous influence on our perceptions. To use music as a metaphor, a favorite song may be undesirable to listen to on a particular occasion. The song remains the same, but the mood of the listener may be not be appropriate at that point in time. The mood within a work of art will always be affected by our own emotional mood. Color perception is also affected in the same way.

Color Memory

I once conducted an experiment where I asked a classroom of BFA students to identify the color red used by Coca-Cola. They were given six red colors to choose from. After much hemming and hawing, less than 25% of the students guessed the Coca-Cola red, even though they had seen it thousands of times. The impression of color changes for us and by us. A maroon colored shirt one day may appear to give the impression of being more plum colored the next day, even when looked at in the same environmental conditions.

Digital Color

In the digital color environment, color is applied in its purist form. All colors can be isolated and defined in mathematical percentages and can be duplicated with complete accuracy. In most cases, digital illustrators and designers select pure colors that are then applied within an image. All colors can be isolated and can be duplicated with complete accuracy. Not withstanding our own perceptual distortions, when it comes to the color artifact itself, colors can be applied consistently. Whereas traditional applied paint is not so precise when it comes to recreating mixed pigments or tints. For example Windsor & Newton manufactures a palette selection of 80 acrylic paint colors. The 80 colors can be mixed to create an endless array of colors, but duplicating any mixture can be extremely difficult. Individual digital color can be chosen from a palette of 16,777,216 distinct color, color can be recorded as swatches or within a style, and duplication is easy.

Color Interactions

Former Bauhaus instructor and Yale University professor Josef Albers published The Interaction of Color in 1963. The book contained many screen-printed examples of color and perception demonstrations. It essentially influenced the next generation of color theory instruction and was prominently applied well into the 1980’s. Although it is used much less now, the premise of the examples is still applicable, especially in a digital environment and print production.

Color always exists within a context, be it on a white background, in a darkened room, or amongst other colors. Below are some color perception exercises that were developed along with The Interaction of Color. These exercises will help demonstrate how colors can be perceptibly influenced by their surroundings. They were created in Adobe Illustrator. The colors used in each example are shown using the color picker, not only to show the colors used, but also their value range and relationship to the color spectrum.

Due to differences that can occur between monitors, there might be some variances in the colors as they appear in the blog, or on your monitor. Also, web friendly colors were not used for these examples.

2 Colors Appear as 3

The small square on the left appears to shift from blue to blue-violet. The colors used are below the examples. 

2 Colors Appear as 4

Although they are the same color, the two small squares appear brighter and warmer than their large square counterparts.

3 Colors Appear as 2

Both violet squares are the same color. Although appearing the same, the two blues squares are different, the small one is lighter and warmer.

3 Colors Appear as 4

The small blue squares are the same color although they appear quite different.

4 Colors Appear as 2

Made up of four colors, the large and small blue squares are different colors, as are the large and small blue-green squares.

4 Colors Appear as 3

Although different in value and warmth, the two small blue squares appear to match. 

Value Color Shifts

All four violets on the grays panels appear to be the same value. The small bars below show the actual color values. The violet on the far left had to be lightened 31% to appear to match the violet on the far right. 

This set of panels shows how the same violet appears to be effected by the background values.