Knowing the theory and psychology behind colors is one thing; knowing the right colors to mix and match is another. It is always good to know the theories behind practices, but every graphic and Web designer should also have useful practical color resources at hand whenever a dash of color inspiration moves him to seek out new palettes for postcard printing and other marketing tools.

Here are 9 color resources for color-loving artists and designers:

Colour Lovers (www.colourlovers.com) is at the top of many color resources list for good reason. It is a free to use repertoire of user-submitted and voted color schemes, be they a single color, a combination, or a palette. It is always great to receive feedback from people who understand and appreciate color the way you do.

Adobe’s Kuler (kuler.adobe.com) is Adobe’s version of Colour Lovers. It is a unique, Flash based color trove of palettes submitted by users and voted upon by others. Once you select a color you fancy, you can readily access a Web interface where you can tweak the color values to suit your exact needs.

Color Combos (www.colorcombos.com) is a straightforward and simple website dedicated to showcasing the way colors work with each other when used in a combo. The Combo Tester and Combo Maker are wonderful tools especially for mixing and matching Web colors for use in Web design.

Owen Winkler’s Red Alt website has a special page called I Like Your Colors (redalt.com/Tools/I+Like+Your+Colors) where you can see what color palettes a certain website uses. It is a simple and brilliant tool for getting real color values from inspiration around the Web.

Jeff Minard helps graphic and Web designers a lot with his Color Palette Generator (jrm.cc/color-palette-generator/) that picks out and lists down the colors used from an image you upload. So if you come across a lovely piece of art and you want its colors, just upload it and see for yourself what colors it uses.

A simple Color Blender (meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/) may be all you need to see the wondrous results of mashing two colors up the way you want. This really simple tool is bookmark-worthy and an absolutely handy tool to add to any color lover’s repertoire.

The Color Wizard (www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp#wizard) can help you out of a color creative block. Just submit the value of a base color you want to start with, and the Wizard would whip out matching colors. It is a wonderful starting point for your color experiments.

The Colorzilla Firefox addon (www.colorzilla.com/firefox/) is a wonderful tool for Firefox-wielding graphic artists and Web designers that lets you analyze (and pick) the colors of a webpage you are viewing on Firefox the way you would if it were on Photoshop - or at least close to it.

The Color Jack (www.colorjack.com/) is another simple and useful color tool, but what sets it apart is the color sphere (www.colorjack.com/sphere/), a sort of color theory visualizer that lets you see how your theories on color and color combinations would look like.

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About the Author:
Lynne Saarte is a writer that hails from Texas. She has been in the Internet business for some years now, specializing in Internet marketing and other online business strategies.

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