I'm always on the lookout for cool tools for my students, and I just found a nice one via Kottke's remaindered links.
One of the problems with teaching web design is that many of my students have, shall we say, only a rudimentary sense of color combinations. For several years, I've pointed them to this Shockwave-based site.
But the Javascript-based site Kottke points to is far better. Not only does it provide a better interface for selection and refinement, it even adds a wonderful component to let you see how your colors will appear to someone with a variety of colorblindnesses. (I tested it with my husband, who's red-green colorblind. "Do you see the difference between these?" I asked, toggling between the "normal" and "deuteranpy" modes. "Between what?" he responded. Guess it works!)
I didn't know you taught web design - I do as well. Cool. Another reason to check in on you.
Yes, in fact, I do have a day job. :)
Looks like I need to update that "classes taught" section, though! Here's the syllabus from last year.
I love love love this site too, me and my nonexistent color sense.
But I wish it would let me input an RGB value instead of HSV. Or have I missed something?
Dorothea, if you have Photoshop you can convert the HSV to RGB in the color picker dialog box (which I was just demo-ing in class today...)
I did find an online converter here, and a downloadable one here.
Wow. Thanks for the link Liz. This one is much more powerful than the one that I have always used...which I can't seem to find the link to anyway.
Nice site, particularly that you can choose which scheme to use, and check the color blindness.
Maybe you already know it (I've seen it around on the blogosphere), but here is another color picker site:
http://www.easyrgb.com/. It also does HSV - RGB conversions (and more) and can even match colors to paint collections.
Cool!
Now my lack of the artistic side of my brain won't suck as much.
More links for those who - like me - are harmony impaired when it comes to colors:
- Mundidesign offers a nice Flash application to choose web color schemes.
- ColorShemer offers both an online as well as a software version of their nice application that has some real sence of harmony.
- ColorImpact is another software out there to help us.
- and if you want to try even more software, there's plenty more shareware and freeware waiting for you.
Great site! I was using this one, but it only does analogous colors: http://kohaistyle.com/scripts/quickcolor/
And from Juicy Studios you can test the color contrast of any two colors for accessibility purposes:
http://www.juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.asp