If you're in a pinch for a color pallet, try using Kuler. It's a nifty website that has many (MANY) awesome pre-made color combos for you to use. Start by dialing in a starter color in the color editor. Then let kuler show off its ability to find a nice set based off the first color. When you have something you love, simply screen cap and copy/paste into photoshop. I usually crop it down to a little colorbar like this
and then drop it into my .psd as a layer. If I'm doing web design and have to dial in the actual colorcode, I'll swatch it in pshop and label each square. This was the colorset I used for the blog!

Other ways to Kuler:

•Character design for Animation
When I'm designing for an animated series and have a large amount of character sheets to complete in a short period of time, Kuler speeds up the process.
•Visual development for video games
If there's a game project where one set of actual prop/weapon/character art is made but has to conform to two separate color families, Kuler is great for picking harmonies from your two main player1/player 2 local colors.
•Fashion illustration
Kuler saved me valuable production time by expediting color harmonies from the color swatches given to me by the wardrobe designer. This helped in the rapid turn around of new flats for review. Because the colorsets were based off the actual thread/patterns/cloth being used to construct the pieces, the designer and I were able to have final designs completed generally before schedule.
•Toy production
I was able to have a very quick approval process using Kuler when I designed a line of plush toys for a client. Even before dropping in local colors to an illustration, we were both happy to edit the colorsets of the entire line, not just per-toy designs. This helped keep a cohesive nature to what would eventually become a line of over a dozen plush toys.

How do you use Kuler?

Labels: colorTip, coolSite, pshopTip