Artryst.com: Design by Gregory Tarnoff

Adobe Kuler Color Theme Generator

As a graphic and web designer I spend quite a bit of time in Illustrator and Photoshop. I find that a lot of time can end up being wasted working in the colors. If you customer doesn’t come with a color pallette picked out for the project ahead of time, a designer can be left scratching their head. I find myself playing games of trial and error to see if I have enough contrast, or lack of contrast, or if the colors clash. Once I have the palette it is easy to save it as part of the project and go back and forth, but finding it in the first place takes time.

That is until about a month ago when Adobe launched Kuler from Adobe Labs. This Flex based, but AJAX like interface lets you create color themes with up to five colors in analogous, monochromatic, triads, complimentary, compund, shade and custom modes. In addition to that you can get the color output in HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB, or Hexadecimal (my personal favorite).

In addition to the easy to use interface, Adobe worked in a social networking web 2.0 voting system. This way, you not only get to create, but discover popular color schemes. As a designer trying to stay ahead of trends this is a nice tool to have.

Once you have created or found the color scheme you need for the project at hand, the best part comes around. Instead of having to sit there and jot down the values you need and then find them back in you graphics application, you can actually save them and import the swatches directly into Photoshop and Illustrator.

I have been using this since its launch and it has actually sped up my production significantly. This is a handy tool and I hope that it either stays in beta a long time or remains free when it is finally complete as it is a nice complement to the rest of my Adobe arsenal.