Selecting Color Schemes for Scrapbooking and Other Photoshop Projects

I just found a great tool for finding or creating color schemes that is available to all users of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  Actually, it’s a website available to anyone, even if you don’t use Photoshop products.  It’s a great source of suggestions to be used as color schemes for anything you can think of – scrapbooks, business cards, or blogs.

The Adobe Kuler website is a treasure trove of color schemes.  In addition to creating your own color scheme or modifying an existing scheme created by a Kuler user, you can also search on keywords (Christmas, pink, wine, terra cotta, spring, pastel and primary were just a few that I browsed).

You can also upload an image and Kuler will create a color scheme for you based on that image. And then you can take the color scheme that you have created and produce various moods based off of it.  The scheme in the screen shot above was “Colorful”, and the other options were bright, mute, deep or dark.  Do you see those small circles around the colors chosen in the image?  You can move those circles if you’d rather use a different color.

This website is very cool!  Can you tell that I’m excited about it?

So, what do you do with these schemes once you’ve found some that you like? Well, you have several different options.  First off, if you have an Adobe ID, you can sign in to Kuler, save your schemes as favorites, or download them.  And, please correct me if  I’m wrong, but I think that everyone can get an Adobe ID, regardless of the version of PS or PSE that you use.

If you have downloaded a scheme, it will be in the ASE format.  I download mine into a separate folder in My Documents.  (I do this with all actions, brushes and any other Photoshop tools so that I don’t lose them when I upgrade my software.)  Then, from Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, go to the Window Menu and select Color Swatches.

Depending on the version of PS or PSE that you have, you will see a button in the top right corner of the Color Swatches palette that might say “More.”  Click on this button and go to Load Swatches.

In the resulting Load Dialogue box, change the Files of Type field to ASE.  Then navigate to the location where you have stored your downloaded color swatch.  Hit Ok, and the new swatch will appear at the end of you color swatch group of colors.

Now, if you’d like to see only the new color swatches, you could select Replace Swatches instead of Load Swatches.  You will lose the ability to return to those colors unless you know the source or color code for them, however.

Once you have the new colors in your colors palette, you can select your Foreground or Background colors from there.

If you don’t have an Adobe account, you can also view the color values in Kuler so that you can transfer the hexadecimal numbers or RGB numbers into your PS color picker.

And there is one last way that I know of to select colors.  If you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements open, size and position your PS and web browser so that you can see both of them at the same time.  Click on the Eyedropper tool in Photoshop, and click somewhere in your Photoshop document window.  Do not release this second click.  Then, drag your mouse to your browser and release the click over the color you want to select.  As you move  the mouse, you should see your color swatches in the toolbar changing.  This tip, by the way, works in any open window, so you could use it to select any color you see on your computer.

For those of you using Photoshop CS4, the Kuler Browser is built in.  Access it from Window/Extenstions.

What do you think? Is this website new to you also?  Some people are born with the ability to select colors that harmonize well.  I hope you are, but I am definitely not!