This entry on a computer software application, Color Schemer, is Part II of a two-part entry on Color. Part I: Colorist Painting may contribute to your appreciation of color and thus of this program.
If you love color, and especially if you hate it because you never get it right, I highly recommend an inexpensive software program called Color Schemer. It is both useful and captivating. It allows you to create color samples and save them in palettes or collections of colors—without wasting any paint.
Sample and Match Colors
You can also sample and match color with any photograph or other image on the screen. Love the colors in that landscape by Vincent van Gogh or that Martha Stewart Living interior? Choose Tools > Color Screen Picker and save the color. You can sample a whole photograph to create a full palette of colors based on a field of wild flowers.
Even more fabulous is the quality of color. On a computer, screen color is instant and luminous. It doesn’t take hours of mixing and 45 coats of thin glazes to get a rich pale blue.
Automatically Generate Palettes
The program will also create analogous splits, angled accents, complements, smooth gradients, shades, soft blends, rectangle shades, semi-circle blends, mono comps, and tetrad blends. I have not a clue what an angled accent or tetrad blend is but my original palette was transformed into 20 or so radiant prisms of perfectly calibrated colors. Fabulous.
Once you have a palette of colors you like, you can name it and save it. As a graphic or website designer this is fabulously helpful because you can save by project. if you are doing website design, you can print out the html # codes for each color. You can also check your color to see how they work for those who are color blind.
Share Color Palettes & Get Ideas
Color Schemer also has a website where people upload their palettes so you can scan through tens of thousands of examples, and even rate them. They are all named: A Rose, A Walk in the Park, Angel in the Moonlight. Even Baby Poop and Windows XP. Wedding names are common and get a lot of stars: Winter Wedding, My Wedding, Silver Wedding, Tiffany’s Berry Wedding, Sunny Wedding Day. You get the idea.remixed colors, you have to mix them every time you want to use them. With Color Schemer, you just enter the color number or drag and drop to your new palette or graphics program. Some artists keep records of 2 drops this and 4 drops that, but many painters and designers are intuitives. Intuitives think differently—we do it the hard way and recreate.
And Avoid Taxes
I spend hours there, particularly instead of doing my taxes, like today when I’ve received my last deferral and have four days to finish them. I have a whole folder of palettes, my own and others. Totally useless. Complete waste of time. So I recommend Color Schemer if you care about color, or even if you don’t. You might grow to love it since you don’t even have to mix the paint.
Color Schemer Website
This entry is Part II of a two-part post on Color. In case you didn’t take my advice the first time, you may enjoy Part I: Colorist Painting that might contribute to your appreciation of color and thus of this program.
Categories: Pass the Olives: Opinions
Tags: Software, Color Schemer, Colors
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Hi Sharon!
This reminds me of a test of a similar kind that I had given to me at Errol Morris’s family house on Long Island many years ago. We were talking about music, and I was chatting on about my semi- impressive music education. At that, Errol’s mother excused herself from the table, and came back with a lovely set of small bells (Swiss, I believe). 10 or 12 (it’s been a while). What made them interesting is that each bell had a different pitch. And the difference between the lowest note and the highest note was only one-half step. The “test” was to put them in the correct order, low to high!
Pretty much the same sort of deal as your color test only using micro-tones. And it makes me wonder if one could do the same with smell or touch. I’m sure someone has . . .
Oh, yes. I “passed.”
— Tom (former student)