Color Your World II: Color Palette Generators

Color is all around us.  When there are no boundaries to the colors you are able to use it can be easy to assemble a pleasing group.  At other times there may be limitations that make creating a harmonious color  scheme more challenging, i.e., the desire to coordinate decor with a print or favorite photo, or perhaps a web developer is a whiz

Lavish Florals Art Print

when it comes to writing code but may be color-challenged.  It is times like these where a palette generator can be an asset.  A quick online search for "color palette generator" will bring up several options.  You may want to try more than one because the results can vary widely.  To illustrate the differences I have used the same image, "Lavish Tulips" shown at right to generate palettes from three different sites.

The first example provides a palette of fifteen 
colors picked directly from the image.

bighugelabs.com

The second example provides an extensive palette 

as well as  pastel, mid-value and dark versions. 

cssdrive.com 

The third provides an option for selecting the number of colors to

 extract ranging from three to fifty.  This site also has a wide variety of 

other color tools allowing you to modify your palette in many ways.

colorexplorer.com

Images can be uploaded from your own computer as well as from online social networking or image sharing sites. Other sites allow you to enter an image url for pictures published elsewhere on the web.  With these tools at your disposal choosing a harmonious palette should be just a click away.