Color + Design Blog by COLOURlovers

How To Make Vertical Multiwidth Blends

2009-12-09T12:59:59Z

This is a guest post by rockstarkate.

In this tutorial rockstarkate combines the use of COLOURlovers Palette Tools (COPASO, PHOTOCOPA, COLOR PICKER) and Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator to create multiwidth Palettes blends. It is also possible to do this with other graphic apps such as Gimp, Painter & Corel.

Using Photoshop

Short Version

1.) find the two palettes you want to use and arrange them in photoshop with one on the top and one on the bottom. put them both on the same layer with space in between.
2.) make a selection for the first blend. There are several ways you could do this. I use the Magic Wand tool on the two rectangles of color then the Polygonal Lasso tool to add the connection.
3.) select one color as your foreground color and the other as your background color.
4.) make a new layer and fill the selection with a gradient of your two colors.
5.) repeat, placing each blend on its own layer.
6.) I can't seem to make a perfect selection and there is space inbetween each blend. I select each layer and nudge it to the left until the space is gone.
7.) Voila! That was easy, wasn't it?

Long Version

1.) find the two palettes you want to use and arrange them in photoshop with one on the top and one on the bottom. put them both on the same layer with space in between.

2.) make a selection for the first blend. There are several ways you could do this. I use the Magic Wand tool on the two rectangles of color then the Polygonal Lasso tool to add the connection.

3.) select one color as your foreground color and the other as your background color

4.) make a new layer and fill the selection with a gradient of your two colors.

5.) repeat, placing each blend on its own layer.

6.) I can't seem to make a perfect selection and there is space inbetween each blend. I select each layer and nudge it to the left until the space is gone.

7.) Voila! That was easy, wasn't it?

Using Illustrator

Short Version

1. Find two palettes you'd like to blend and open them in two windows of your browser. I leave the two windows open so I can share my blend on each page when it is complete.
2. In Illustrator, start a new document. Make it the size you'd like your final image to be (I make mine 300 px wide)
3. Right click one palette image and choose "copy image"
4. In Illustrator, paste image (CTRL+V on a PC)
5. Repeat 3 and 4 with the second palette
6. Scale both palettes to fit in your artboard. Arrange them with one on top and one on the bottom and scale them vertically so they each take up 1/4 of the total height or less. You should have white space in between the two palettes- this is where your blend will go.
7. Use the Live Trace tool to convert each image to vectors.
8. Select both images and choose Object>Expand then Ungroup twice (CTRL+SHIFT+G)
9. Now you have 10 little rectangles of color. Select the left most colors of each palette. Select Object>Blend>Make (ALT+CTRL+B) The default settings will do quite nicely, but I will explain how to change them later.
10. Select the next colors to the right, top and bottom and make another blend.
11. Repeat with the remaining 3 colors in each palette.
12. You could stop here. I like to rearrange the order of the stack of colors to the most pleasing image to my eye. I select each blended color group, right click>arrange>"bring to front" or "send to back" and just try different orders until the image looks the way I want it to look.
13 Export your image and share!

Long Version

1.) Find two palettes you'd like to blend and open them in two windows of your browser. I leave the two windows open so I can share my blend on each page when it is complete.

2.) In Illustrator, start a new document. Make it the size you'd like your final image to be (I make mine 300 px wide)

3.) Right click one palette image and choose "copy image"

4.) In Illustrator, paste image (CTRL+V on a PC) (EDIT > PASTE)

5.) Repeat 3 and 4 with the second palette

6.) Scale both palettes to fit in your artboard. Arrange them with one on top and one on the bottom and scale them vertically so they each take up 1/4 of the total height or less. You should have white space in between the two palettes- this is where your blend will go.

You can experiment with different heights for a different gradient effect

7.) Use the Live Trace tool to convert each image to vectors.

Live Trace is a nifty tool that coverts raster images to vectors. This works very well on images such as palettes due to their simple shapes (rectangles) and finite number of colors (5 or less)

Here are the settings that will always work with palettes:

Repeat with second palette.

8.) Select both images and choose Object>Expand then Ungroup twice (CTRL+SHIFT+G)

then

9.) Now you have 10 little rectangles of color. Select the left most colors of each palette. Select Object>Blend>Make (ALT+CTRL+B)

result:

I like the default blend setting, but there are some interesting variations you could make by changing the Blend Options. Another thing to play with...

10.) Select the next colors to the right, top and bottom and make another blend.

11.) Repeat with the remaining 3 colors in each palette.

12.) You could stop here. I like to rearrange the order of the stack of colors to the most pleasing image to my eye. I select each blended color group, right click>arrange>"bring to front" or "send to back" and just try different orders until the image looks the way I want it to look.

13.) Export your image and share!

Multiblend Gallery

For more information check out the COLOURlovers' group Try to Blend In.

Why Is Snow White?

2009-12-08T16:28:38Z

Snow White

Snow, the white stuff, without it there'd be no white christmas, or white blanket, but why do a few clear (translucent) ice crystals bunched together look white at all?

We all know the basics of visual color perception; light frequencies travel around and run into things causing them to be absorbed, scattered, or pass right through. The outcome: the frequencies left over make it back to our eye and are interpreted by the brain which reveals before our eyes those beautiful colors we all love so much. Amazing.

Grant MacDonald

So, why is snow white? When white sun light hits snow there are so many pockets of air and ice crystals that it causes a diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum scattering every wave length right back at us, and the combination of all color frequencies appears white.

Glacier Blue

GraemeKelly

A glacier is a mass accumulation of snow and ice. However, unlike snow, a glacier's color appears a deep, almost deep-sea-eerie blue. This is because, while white snow sits atop these massive giants, all the previous year's snow has been compressed into ice, and light acts differently in ice. When white sunlight hits a glacier, instead of being completely scattered, like with snow, it penetrates deep into the ice. The farther it goes the more red frequencies get absorbed due to an "overtone of infrared OH stretching mode of the water molecule." This is the same reason water appears blue.

Watermelon Snow

sweart

While yellow may be the most colorful snow we in the urban world may've come across, snow colors of green, oranges and reds do naturally exist. One being Watermelon Snow, which is reddish or pink in color, with the slight scent of a fresh watermelon. This type of snow is common during the summer in alpine and coastal polar regions worldwide, such as the Sierra Nevada of California. Watermelon Snow gets its color mainly from Chlamydomonas nivalis, a species of green algae containing a secondary red carotenoid pigment (astaxanthin) in addition to chlorophyll.

Acoustic Properties

santo rizzuto

As little as 2cm of snow can change the acoustic properties of a landscape. Newly fallen snow acts as a sound-absorbing material due to the trapped air between the individual flakes which trap and dampen vibrations. Because of snow's unique properties the permeability and depth of snow in an area can be measured using a loud sound such as a pistol. If the temperature of snow drops below −10 °C (14.0 °F) snow will squeak when walked upon.

Header image by CaptPiper.

Sources & Additional Reading: Snow: 1, 2 | Glaciers | Watermelon Snow | Color the Snow

Color Inspiration: Wintery Whites

Don't Forget To Take Your Daily Dose Of Color

2009-12-07T15:15:39Z

As a reminder to "eat your daily recommended dose of color," Tattfoo Tan, an artist whose work "seeks to find an immediate, direct, and effective way of exploring issues related to the individual in society... Through the employment of multiple forms of media," developed the Nature Matching System as a public art project in New York City. The Nature Matching System (NMS) was conceived in an effort to spread awareness and promote the health benefits of eating colorful fruits and vegetables.

NMS —Nature Matching System was developed by Tattfoo as a reminder to consume your daily recommended doses of color. The shades of color displayed at farmers’ markets are more than skin deep, reflecting the inner potential of every fruit and vegetable; intense colors might even be called nature’s nutrition labels. They get many of their colors from phytonutrients, compounds that play key roles in health and reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. The more colors come together at a meal, the better. Sadly, marketers of junk food apply the same technique used by nature to pollinate seed to their nutrition-deprived product. Color is a device that can do good or be deceptive and ensure the pollination of unhealthy eating habits. The colors on the placemat shown below are all actual food colors, taken from photographs of various fruits and vegetables. Match your meal to the placemat—it is truly a rainbow connection.

Disposable Paper Placemat

Mural at Port Authority Bus Terminal, New York

NMS Mural in DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York

NMS Fruit Labels

NMS Matching System Legend

NMS is a unique color that cannot be matched to other colors, but the below legend is the closest matches to Process Color, Pantone Matching System and Behrs Paint.

Artist Recommended Resources:

What Color is Your Diet? by David Heber, M.D. published by Regan Books
Super Foods by Michael van Straten and Barbara Griggs
Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/4/T044200.asp

http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/

More about the project:

Tattfoo Tan | Times Square Alliance

Eclectic Color Roundup

2009-12-06T12:00:40Z

Products

Christmas by Colour

Link

"Hue, hue, hue…"

A set of twelve Christmas cards based on colours submitted to our Christmas by Colour project. The cards are split into two packs with six in each pack.

Printed 4-colour litho on Trucard, the cards measure 165mm x 117mm and are blank inside. White envelopes included.

Pentax K-X: 100 colors, 100 styles

Color Simulator | Product Info | Color Ranking

Pentax has released K-x series, single-lens reflex cameras with 20 body colors and 5 grip colors.

Via S P G R A

Art

100 Colors, 100 Writings, 100 Days by Rachel Berger

Design Observer

"Every day for one hundred days (from October 30, 2008 to February 6, 2009) I picked a paint chip out of a bag and responded to it with a short writing. I have selected my favorite forty, titling each writing with the number of the day it was written (out of 100) and the name of the color from that day’s paint chip. This project was generated in Michael Bierut’s 100 Day Workshop at the Yale School of Art."

See the Project

Blog

Subway Architecture

designboom

"london’s underground became the fist subway system in the world when it began operation in 1863. since then, underground subways have been built in almost every major city of the world. from new york and paris to hong kong and dubai, subways are an essential part of public transportation in cities. within these systems, architecture plays a big role in defining the environment of the subway. here is a collection of some of the most architecturally interesting subway stations."

Interior Design Trends: Black & Green

2009-12-05T12:00:00Z

What are your thoughts on the black and green duo? I like it, when done tastefully, of course. Lately, the dark hues have been a pretty huge interest for me, and I have to say that: yes, I find it to be nice. Also, the bowls that are pictured are kind of cool, love that they have a place for chopsticks.

lamp, dinnerware, bowls, box, art, bench, doggy travel kit

Vintage Color & Design: 70's Super 8 Film Boxes

2009-12-04T12:33:53Z

Inspiration from 8mm Super 8 film covers. This great collection is from Super 8 Hobby, and found via World Famous Design Junkies.

Food Inspired Color

2009-12-03T13:17:11Z

With three groups dedicated to the topic, Food has been wetting the color lover's palette [sic], well, probably ever since we first got hungry. And with that time of year (the holidays) upon us; the one when everyone claims to be going back on "the diet" right after the next meal, we thought it would be a good idea to check out some palettes from the COLOURlovers groups Yummy Colours, foodiediles and Eat It Up.

Eat It Up

foodieflies

Yummy Colours

Magazine Color Trends: O, The Oprah Magazine

2009-12-02T12:11:48Z

O, The Oprah Magazine, sometimes simply abbreviated to O, is a monthly magazine founded by Oprah Winfrey and Hearst Corporation. It was first published on April 19, 2000. As of June 2004, its average paid circulation was over 2.7 million copies, two thirds by subscription. A South African edition was first published in April 2002; according to the South African Advertising Research Foundation, its average readership was over 300,000.

Since its inception, Oprah had exclusively appeared on the cover of each issue. The first shared cover is her April 2009 issue in which she appears with the First Lady Michelle Obama. The second shared cover is with fellow daytime host Ellen DeGeneres on the December 2009 issue. Four separate covers were shot for this special holiday issue.

Here is a look at the last year of O Magazine covers and their color trends.

Oprah's Favorite Color?

Green 30.7% | Red 23% | Yellow 15.3%

*Hue occurrence out of a total of 13 covers (both blue & green counted for 1/09)

Covers

Cover images from Magazine Agent

Online

The Color of a full year's worth of oprah magazine covers overlaid on top of one another. Image by dentyone.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 for Mac (+COLOURlovers)

2009-12-01T14:04:36Z

Some people call them color palettes and some people call them color schemes... Now we're all part of one big family. We've known Aaron from ColorSchemer for a few years now and have talked on and off about how we could work together. Well, I'm excited to announce that we're not just working together, we're joining color forces.

The new release of ColorSchemer Studio 2 for Mac of is the first hint at what the future holds for that partnership with the integration of the 1,000,000 COLOURlovers palettes directly accessible via the software gallery browser. Pretty soon you'll not only be able to browse palettes from COLOURlovers, you'll be able to save your palettes right to our site from your desktop. You'll see the best of what we've been building and the best from what Aaron's been building begin to form together here and in ColorSchemer Studio.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 for Mac OS X

ColorSchemer Studio 2 is a professional color-matching application for your Mac that will help you build beautiful color schemes quickly and easily.

Use ColorSchemer Studio to identify color harmonies for the web (RGB) or print (CMYK), create palettes from photos, search over a million existing color schemes, mix colors, create gradient blends, and much more!

ColorSchemer Studio 2 takes color matching and management to a new level with a number of advanced new features and tools, including:

CMYK Support

One of the most common feature requests we get is for adding CMYK support, and now ColorSchemer Studio 2 has it!

Not only that, but this new release goes even further by color-managing both RGB and CMYK colors, so you can specify color profiles (just like in Photoshop and other pro graphics apps) to make sure your colors look exactly as you intended.

Color Management/Color Profile Support

ColorSchemer Studio 2 now color-manages all displayed colors. You can now work with specific color profiles to ensure your color-critical work comes out right the first time, whether it’s for the web or print.

COLOURlovers Integration

Connect to the COLOURlovers community to browse, search, and download over a million color palettes right from the program.

LiveSchemes – Color relationships that you define

The new LiveSchemes tools help you to visually create color harmony relationships as easily as dragging colors around the color wheel.

Create custom LiveScheme formulas based on color theory, or your own creativity. You can also reverse-engineer and color-shift existing color schemes with a simple drag & drop.

Browse your saved LiveSchemes to apply custom color theory relationships to any color to build a ready-to-use color scheme.

QuickPreview Layout Templates

ColorSchemer Studio 2 now comes with 13 different QuickPreview layout templates that you can use to experiment with color scheme ideas in a variety of different settings, including website, blog, print and pattern layouts.

Color Variations

Use the new Variations palette to find colors that are similar or related to any starting base color.

Color Groups

Organize your colors into groups or folders within your Favorite Colors when building your color schemes.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 also adds a bunch of other enhancements to give you more control over your colors:

New ways to pick colors: Use the new spectrum picker, or select from among the included color libraries.
New import/export formats: Including Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE), PNG, and XML formats.
Enhanced Contrast Analyzer Check text and background color combinations for sufficient contrast and readability, based on W3C, WCAG, or HP accessibility recommendations.
Drag-color-to-text Drag a color from ColorSchemer Studio and drop it right into your HTML and it will automatically be converted into a hex value in your code.
Improved UI: Most tool windows have been combined into an easier-to-manage single-window interface.

Happy Huesdays: Special COLOURlovers Offer

In the spirit of Black Friday... we're extending a more colorful offer. If you purchase a license of ColorSchemer Studio in December and get a FREE Sponsored Membership on COLOURlovers as a thank you (a $20 value).

Just email us with your Order Number for ColorSchemer Studio and your COLOURlovers username and we'll upgrade your account. (Already a Sponsored Member? We'll give you a gift credit to use next year or give away.)

Licenses/Upgrades

ColorSchemer Studio 2 remains $49.99 per license, and discounted upgrade licenses are also available for registered users of ColorSchemer Studio v1.x for $29.99.

» Purchase a license
» Upgrade your license
» More info

Also, if you purchased ColorSchemer Studio v1.x after Oct 1, 2009, you are entitled to a free upgrade to ColorSchemer Studio 2. Visit the myColorSchemer section and enter your Order Number to upgrade your license key.

As Always... You Can Make it Better

This isn't just a product to sell you... this is a product for us to grow together. We've always taken special care to only work with quality products and never compromise the wonderful community and culture we have here. The partnership with ColorSchemer is brand new, so we've only had a little amount of time to work on integrating our services. We plan on bringing the best of both worlds together in the future and you can help us with that.
-What would you like to see ColorSchemer include from COPASO?
-What would you like to see COLOURlovers bring online from ColorSchemer?
Aaron is now a part of the COLOURlovers family, so welcome him and and let him know how he can help you share the love.

Color In Film: Sunshine

2009-11-30T13:03:42Z

This is a guest post by Martin Petrov (a.k.a aeonbeat).

The movie (Sunshine) itself is not that interesting, but the camera work and choice of colors in every single scene is really joyful. You can notice, for example, how a crew member's t-shirt and an object on the table are the same color, while at the same time everything else is merging to form a background. I don't see any specific symbolic meaning behind that, and it's nothing new for sure, but still, it's inspiring for people who love colors.

Do you have a film that gets your color juices mixing? Share it with us. Use the 'Share the Love' box to share your inspiration.