The marvelous thing about color within design is you have the choice from an infinite number of possibilities and combinations. On the flip side of that, having infinite color possibilities makes it very difficult to lock down on the perfect color scheme or palette for your project. This is were the post will hopefully help you.
In this post we have collected 25 completely free tools, apps and generators to help you find, manage, and create beautiful and, hopefully, perfect color schemes.
Color Scheme Designer
Color Scheme Designer is very simple to use app that offers you a complete report on how to use any given color (in various combinations as monochromatic, complementary, triadic, analogous, tetradic). One of its interesting features is the “vision simulation”, which offers you the option to view the color scheme through the eyes of someone with impaired vision or with an optical disorder.
Touchan
This application is accompanied by a short video tutorial which will allow you to fully utilize all of its features. Its very simple to use: upload an image that contains interesting nuances and Touchan will find out the hexadecimal value and create a color palette for you. It also has an color deficiency viewer.
Kuler
Kuler has been built by Adobe, and that is plenty prove its high quality. You can find infinite numbers of color themes created by previous users and you can experiment with any color combination that your mind could possibly ever imagine.
Colorotate
Colorotate, with its effective 3D effects, is a beautifully designed app. Its functionalities do not differ too much from any of the previous apps we have mentioned, but its idea is fabulous: A normal user can vary the hues and tints with an interactive 3D pyramid, which is pretty cool; much more you can blend two colors simultaneously.
Color Munki
“The world is your palette”, is the tagline of this tool which has two variants: one for photographs and one for designers.
Colorsuckr
ColorSuckr is awesome! You can create color schemes based on any image (you can also search Flickr) and it will select the 12 most common colors.
Colorspire
The color scheme, that you create with Colorspire, allows you to preview the color combinations in real time and view the results via an interactive web layout. Recommended for web designers.
ColorJack
This is a very basic application, which is what makes it great. It does exactly as it says on the tin: You can create your favorite color combinations and export it. Nice and simple.
Nettefect ColorMatch
Here are some similar ones that have almost the same options:
Color Explorer
Ficml Color Wheel
Infohound
Pourpre
Colorschemer
Colormixers
Slayeroffice
Dhtmlgoodies Color Schemer
Colorblender
Copaso
The Color Wizard
Color Palette Generator
Color Hunter
Colr
Pictaculous
About the Author
Daniel Pintilie is a talented designer from Romania, available for hire, who is really looking forward to his next interesting project. You can get in touch with him or follow him on Twitter, and would love to hear your opinions about his articles!
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2 Jul, 2010
Useful list, but all of the images are mixedup!
2 Jul, 2010
Excellent collection of tools. Thank you.
You may want to visit the parent site of color wizard
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/
It has lots of info about colour theory, physics as well as other online tools such as a contrast analyser, a random colour scheme generator. A comprehensive block of info, really userful
2 Jul, 2010
Uh, oh. The pictures in this post are messed up! For the most part the name on the picture is the one above :S
2 Jul, 2010
All fixed now, thanks for the heads up.
2 Jul, 2010
Great list. How about a list of the best color pickers to compliment these.
One I’ve been using recently is a little gem called pointandsee. Very simple no frills but works very well.
http://www.pointandsee.co.uk
I’m not connected with this product and used to use colorcop but this now seems to have been discontinued.
2 Jul, 2010
Excellent article. I would just add ColorSchemer Studio 2 (for mac) and PHOTOCOPA to the list.
Cheers! :)
2 Jul, 2010
Nice collection of colour tools, the only issue with it at the start the names don’t match up with the images but other than that great resources :)
2 Jul, 2010
Great compilation of very useful tools and apps. Thnx buddy for sharing
2 Jul, 2010
dude you are good!!!keep up the good work!
2 Jul, 2010
I had no idea there are so many programs about colors. I am looking forward hearing your next idea.
2 Jul, 2010
I always use Color Scheme Designer. And Colorzilla of couse!
2 Jul, 2010
Useful post, I’ve been looking for a replacement for Kuler but haven’t got around to it yet(it keeps breaking).
I am a colour-blind web designer (yes, a colour-blind web designer), do you know of any colour tools that cater for this type of condition?
3 Jul, 2010
Wow, that sounds intriguing, but you sure aren’t totally color-blind, right? :)
5 Jul, 2010
I am not 100% colour-blind (as in I see colours) but I can’t distinguish between many colours with similar tones etc: reds/greens, blues/purples, greens/browns and a fair few more.
If you do hear of anything that may be of use to me, let me know.
Cheers!
2 Jul, 2010
Very nice useful article, thanks for share these resources
2 Jul, 2010
Hats off to http://0to255.com/, “a simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color. “
2 Jul, 2010
Thank you
really amazing..
I’ve tried http://colorsuckr.com and giving the great result
4 Jul, 2010
Here you go, one more (simple one): Color Picker
5 Jul, 2010
Well done, this is great collection of generators! Personally, I’m a sucker for the apple crayon pallet :)
5 Jul, 2010
Excellent collection… and so useful :-)
Thanks…
8 Jul, 2010
really usefull, thanks
11 Jul, 2010
I liked some of the apps alot. especially the first one. I wish it was a downloadable app though :P
15 Jul, 2010
very usefull
19 Aug, 2010
Thanks for the awesome list of color tools!