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.
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.
We have more than 600k seamless background patterns and more than 1 million color palettes... Why aren't more sites using our API to give their users beautiful options for their profiles? Sounds like a no-brainer right? Well, I met Evan Williams (@ev) from twitter a few weekends ago and I presented this idea to him. He was open to it, but Twitter was super busy working on other features... BUT if we built it he'd definitely check it out. Well, Ev... Here she is!
@ev "Holy crap, this is rad: @COLOURlovers built a Twitter theme designer: http://colourlovers.com/themeleon/twitter"
So does Twitter! @Twitter "Can't get enough of the @COLOURlovers app! A slick customization tool for your Twitter background. #appwednesday"
A Beautiful Twitter Profile in 3 Simple Steps:
1.) Login to Twitter
2.) Choose your background (pattern or photo) and your colors
3.) Save your settings. & Share your work
Browse Your COLOURlovers Creations & Faves
Want to create your theme using your own palettes and patterns from COLOURlovers?
Login and browse your New & Top patterns or palettes as well as your Favorite New & Top.
Use the Tools Luke!
-Apply. Although the wording is a bit cumbersome. You can apply the colors you have in your pattern to your color settings below & you can also apply colors you have in your settings below to a pattern template. *Click each of the buttons, it'll be obvious what they do... and then help us improve the wording on them :)*
-Shuffle. Click the button to give you some inspiration by mixing up the order of the colors in your settings area.
-Undo. Oops. Didn't mean to click there? Not sure what you were thinking with that last color choice? No worries, just click the undo button. (You can click it more than once to correct a spree of mis-clicking.)
-Drag & Drop. Click and drag any of the 5 color squares in your pattern preview or down in your color settings to change their order.
*New* DHTML Color Picker
While building themeleon we decided it was time to give our DHTML color picker a refresh. We not only updated the aesthetic we made it a bit bigger so the (S) Saturation and (V) Brightness sliders can fully display all 255 steps. We'll soon be releasing the code for this picker under the same terms as our previous picker to be freely used in any of your projects. (We did remove CMYK from this version for now as the conversions weren't working perfectly. It will find its way back in when we have it locked down.)
Theme Leon? What does that mean?
No, no... Thee-mee-lee-uhn. Like Chameleon. Get it? As in a chameleon can change its colors... and you can change your theme colors... We're so proud of ourselves on this one. We didn't even go with our old trusty and take the first few lettes to make up a name... COlor PAlette SOftware (COPASO) & PHoto COlor PAlettes (PHOTOCOPA).
From the classic Yellow cabs of New York City and Black cabs of London to the new Pink cabs in Mexico, it seems there's a different color cab for every city.
While many taxis colors are chosen to be easily recognizable to those who need a ride, sometimes cabs are color coded depending on the company they run under, like in Chicago which has no official cab color.
Sometimes cab colors can be protected under law, as in this case from Boston.
In Mexico, they went from Yellow to Green & White to White with a Bright Red stripe around them, and as of late, Burgundy Red and Gold. There is even a 'women only' Pink cab company.
In Shanghai only companies with more than a 1000 cabs can choose their own color leaving the city with a select group of 8 colors.
Wow! What an honor. It's so amazing how many of you have taken the time to share your color ideas & inspiration with us. COLOURlovers continues to make me very proud to be part of such a great community. Our 1,000,000th palette is a great milestone and we're excited and inspired to continue sharing the color love with you all. You're all so awesome.
Some Color Palette Milestones...
#1
#1 (Community Palette)
#100
#10,000
#100,000
#1,000,000
#999,999
#1,000,001
But our 1,000,000 wouldn't have been possible without our 999,999th... and every palette that has been lovingly shared on this site. Thank you all so much.
All 1,000,000 Color Palettes...
(Each pixel is a color strip in a palette) Click to see larger version.
Some Interesting Color Coincidences
One of my favorite things to watch is the interesting coincidences that pop up when you have people from all over the world naming colors and putting them in palettes. Some fun stuff in there... go have a look and laugh.
What Do We Do With So Many Palettes?
Ok, so that's a lot of color... We're working hard on the code for Version 4 of COLOURlovers that will make it easier to find the color inspiration you're looking for, to share your color ideas with others and to make even more palettes.
Make Something Awesomely Colorful!
We have an API... Who knows what awesome stuff you might build with access to 1 million palettes. Some things that have already been built:
Your Palettes... Your Stories: Share Why You Create
In the comments below, share a bit of your story with us. I'd love to hear your answers to these questions. (They might help us explain to new lovers just why this place is so great.) Why do you create palettes?
What do you like about it?
If you use palettes from COLOURlovers, what for?
What makes COLOURlovers such a great creative community?
Thank you all so much. I'm looking forward to the next million, 10 million... and every other colorful milestone we'll reach together.
A Chicago-style hot dog is a steamed Red Hot Chicago, Vienna Beef or David Berg hot dog topped with sliced/diced/wedged tomatoes, cucumbers, both a dill pickle spear and sweet pickle relish (a particularly bright green style of relish, referred to as "nuclear green" relish), yellow mustard directly on the sausage, pickled sport peppers, and is finished with celery salt, and served on a steamed poppy seed bun. Chicago-style never includes ketchup, though some vendors offer small packets of the condiment for those wanting to add it. Although outside Chicago this style of hot dog is universally associated with the city, equally popular within Chicago is a "Maxwell Street Polish" sausage, usually served on a plain bun with fried or grilled onions and mustard. Both variations are becoming readily available through the nationwide expansions of such Chicago area fast food eateries as Portillo's.
The most popular variety of hot dog in Maine is one made with natural casing. The casing is colored red, and are commonly referred to as red hot dogs, though are more commonly known as red snappers.
Inspiration from the launch pad of a space shuttle.
At launch, the Space Shuttle consists of a dark orange-colored external fuel tank, two white slender solid rocket boosters and orbiter. When the boosters ignite and the gray metal structure releases the shuttle, orange and white tear through the sky creating unexpected compliments against the serene blue and black.
Politics aside, the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL) has a collection of historically important and good lookin' posters in wide variety of illustrative styles. The collection which showcases work from the 1960's to the present is shared by Flickr user *linds and is also available to view at the OSPAAAL site.
Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a professor of Pyschology at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, and the famed creator of the Rotating snakes illusion, has been updating his site since 2002 and it is full of intriguing color illusion. He is also responsible for inspiring the artwork on Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion album.
Four Tanks
There are two pairs, each of which consists of two squares of the same color. Which are the two pairs?
Answer of "Four tanks": the pair of the leftmost square and the neighboring one, and the pair of the rightmost square and the neighboring one
Squares of four colors
Copyright Akiyoshi Kitaoka 2007 (February 15)
It appears that there were squares of four colors, though there are two colors (red and green) for squares.
Do you have something interesting and colorful you want to share with over 600,000 lovers per month? We'd love to have you as a guest author, so send us an email with your tips or what you'd like to write about.
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