If you’re looking for a new way to find color inspiration in your photos, try this simple Photoshop technique to pull out colors from a single pixel line and create some unique color artworks… there are so many vastly different results from the same images depending on where you select the single pixel line. Try it out:
Photoshop Instructions
-Open Any Photo You Want
-Use the Single Row Marquee Tool & Select a Single Pixel Row
-Transform (CTRL+T) & Stretch to Full Height
-Then Use Filter > Artistic > Dry Brush
Polyvore is a member based web application that allows its users to sort through uploaded images or those grabbed from around the web, to create collages for inspiration and to share with others.
The site’s main focus is fashion, but also includes interiors and whatever else people can come up with. Filter through the images by garment or accessory type, brand and color. With the color sorter it would seemingly make it very easy to put together the perfect outfit palette, making it a useful tool for any color lover.
Polyvore was founded by ex-Yahoo executive Pasha Sadri. While branded as fun creative collage site that makes use of the infinite amounts of content available on the web, Polyvore also allows its users to shop the products that they use in their collages. Click on any item, and a product description will appear along with the original link where the item can be found.
The direct engagement of real products and brands with its users is some what of a dream for marketers, as the model is basically user-generated advertising.
In the U.S. 7% of the male population – or about 10.5 million men – and 0.4% of the female population either cannot distinguish red from green, or see red and green differently. Color blindness affects a significant amount of the population, and it is even more prevalent in more isolated populations with a smaller gene pools. It is mostly a genetic condition, though it can be caused by eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain chemicals.
For those of us who see colors just fine, it is hard to imagine what those with color blindness are seeing. Luckily humans are smart and have created technology like the Color Blind Web Page Filter.
Popular Websites: As Seen by the Color Blind
The Color Blind Web Page Filter, which was used in this post to demonstrate the different types of colorblindness, allows you to view what a site looks like to people with each type of color blindness. Here are a few examples from some popular websites.
Iconic Art: As Seen by the Color Blind
Some would say we all see art in our own unique way… that would be especially true for the color blind. Here are a couple examples of some of the most iconic paintings as seen by the color blind.
Color Blindness Background
Using the filter we’ll take a look at the current most popular palette, July, and how it is seen by those with different types of color blindness.
The normal human retina contains two kinds of light cells: the rod cells (active in low light) and the cone cells (active in normal daylight). Normally, there are three kinds of cones, each containing a different pigment. The cones are activated when the pigments absorb light. The absorption spectra of the cones differ; one is maximally sensitive to short wavelengths, one to medium wavelengths, and the third to long wavelengths (their peak sensitivities are in the blue, yellowish-green, and yellow regions of the spectrum, respectively). The absorption spectra of all three systems cover much of the visible spectrum, so it is not entirely accurate to refer to them as “blue”, “green” and “red” receptors, especially because the “red” receptor actually has its peak sensitivity in the yellow. The sensitivity of normal color vision actually depends on the overlap between the absorption spectra of the three systems: different colors are recognized when the different types of cone are stimulated to different extents. Red light, for example, stimulates the long wavelength cones much more than either of the others, and reducing wavelength causes the other two cone systems to be increasingly stimulated, causing a gradual change in hue. Many of the genes involved in color vision are on the X chromosome, making color blindness more common in males than in females.
Idée Labs has created a useful set of online image search tools, including a multicolor search that allows you to filter images using a palette of up to ten colors. Using a spectrum color selector, you can pick the colors you are looking for and it will return only photos that contain those colors.
Multicolr Search Lab
With the Multicolr Search Lab you are able to search up to ten different colors from a palette of 120 different shades. The search will filter through three million ‘interesting’ flickr photos or three million Alamy stock photos.
Many of you here in the community are quite familiar with the color tools available on COLOURlovers (if you’re new to the site a good place to start is the FAQ), but what about other helpful color tools that might exist somewhere on the internet. Well, here are two such tools: ‘Name That Color‘ and ‘Color Name & Hue‘, that I came across recently; one for color vocabulary and identification, the other, a helpful tool for those who are colorblind.
‘Name That Color’
‘Name That Color‘ is a helpful little site created by a dude with other dudes in mind, but it most certainly will also help those of the female variety.
For those of us who can’t exactly remember, or who never knew, what color Danube is, and others who just want to expand their color vocabulary, so instead of red you can use Monza, even though it is totally just Red, might want to check it out.
Simply create a color manually or enter the Hex code to reveal what you mistakenly took for Mojo, when it was, in fact, Mule Fawn.
The database was created from names found on Wikipedia, Crayola, and the Resene Color-Name Dictionary. It’s probably good that he didn’t try to use the COLOURlovers library of color names. Besides what an interminable task it would be, he would probably have more than a few colors with the same name, but that are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum, or, all the colors would be named ‘love.’ And while I personally prefer to make up color names on-the-fly, like the Suddlepup shirt I’m currently wearing, it might be nice to be able to narrow it down to around Burnt Sienna if, god forbid, you had to discus color with your designer or decorator over the phone.
With the release of the COLOURlovers API, you can now access almost 1 million named colors and more than 325,000 color palettes for your creative projects and applications. Creating a theme editor and want to give your users some color theme options? Creating a visual project that ties keywords to colors? Who knows what amazingly creative stuff people will come up with.
Below are two showcase examples of the COLOURlovers API in action as well as the full API documentation. Happy API COLOURloving!
COLOURlovers API Usage Showcase
Desktop Color Search - AIR App
Desktop Color Search is an Adobe AIR app that runs on your desktop and allows you to search the entire COLOURlovers database for colors, palettes and patterns. You’ll need to download the Adobe AIR runtime in order to run Desktop Color Search, you can use the link below to install AIR. (It works in both Windows and on Mac OS X) Special thanks to Levi McCallum at FutonMedia for coding the AIR app.
A simple interface to COLOURlover’s deep, deep palette library, it creates randomized compositions using rectangular geometry drawn by the Degrafa drawing library. Have some fun of your own color fun with Dekaf Lovers.
When we were developing COPASO, we found that we needed to have a more advanced color picker to work inside the application… and since COPASO is built with DHTML it was easy enough to pull out the picker to use on the other creation pages of our site. Once we’d modularized the color picker code it made sense to offer it to others to use on their own sites and projects. So here is the code to get our Color Picker working on your site for free. (We’ll even host the files)
COLOURlovers Color Picker Demo
Here is the Code You Need & Examples…
Put this Code into Your HTML <head> Section: <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/COLOURloversColorPicker/COLOURloversColorPicker.css" type="text/css" media="all" /> <script type="text/JavaScript" src="http://colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/COLOURloversColorPicker/js/COLOURloversColorPicker.js"></script> Put this Code into Your HTML <body> Section: <div id="CLCP" class="CLCP"></div> <script type="text/JavaScript"> _whichField = "hexValue_0"; CLCPHandler = function(_hex) { // This function gets called by the picker when the sliders are being dragged. The variable _hex contains the current hex value from the picker // This code serves as an example only, here we use it to do three things: // Here we simply drop the variable _hex into the input field, so we can see what the hex value coming from the picker is: document.getElementById(_whichField).value = _hex; // Here is where we color the BG of a div to preview the color: document.getElementById("CLCPUpdateDiv").style.background = ("#" + _hex); // Giving you control over this function really puts the reigns in your hands. Rewrite this function as you see fit to really take control of this color picker. } // Settings: _CLCPdisplay = "none"; // Values: "none", "block". Default "none" _CLCPisDraggable = true; // Values: true, false. Default true _CLCPposition = "absolute"; // Values: "absolute", "relative". Default "absolute" _CLCPinitHex = "0039B3"; // Values: Any valid hex value. Default "ffffff" CLCPinitPicker(); </script>
<input name="YourInputName" id="hexValue_0" style="width: 100px;" maxlength="6" value="0000FF" /> <a href="JavaScript:_whichField='hexValue_0';CLCPshowPicker({_hex: document.getElementById('hexValue_0').value});">Show picker and load the color to the left</a>
<input name="YourInputName" id="multipleHexValue_0" style="width: 100px;" maxlength="6" value="FFFFFF" /> <a href="JavaScript:_whichField='multipleHexValue_0';CLCPshowPicker({_x: 300,_y: 200});">Show picker at x=300, y=200 and don't update it's color</a> <input name="YourInputName" id="multipleHexValue_1" style="width: 100px;" maxlength="6" value="18AB49" /> <a href="JavaScript:_whichField='multipleHexValue_1';CLCPshowPicker({_hex: document.getElementById('multipleHexValue_1').value,_x: 12,_y: 400});">Show picker at x=12, y=400 and load the color to the left</a> <input name="YourInputName" id="multipleHexValue_2" style="width: 100px;" maxlength="6" value="FF0000" /> <a href="JavaScript:_whichField='multipleHexValue_2';CLCPshowPicker({_hex: document.getElementById('multipleHexValue_2').value});">Show picker and load the color to the left</a> <input name="YourInputName" id="multipleHexValue_3" style="width: 100px;" maxlength="6" value="FFFFFF" /> <a href="JavaScript:_whichField='multipleHexValue_3';CLCPshowPicker();">Show picker at mouse click and don't update it's color</a> <input name="YourInputName" id="multipleHexValue_4" style="width: 100px;" maxlength="6" value="000000" /> <img src="http://colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/v3/color_wheel.png" style="vertical-align: -20%; cursor: pointer;" onclick="_whichField = 'multipleHexValue_4'; CLCPshowPicker();" alt="Show picker at mouse click and don't update it's color" title="Show picker at mouse click and don't update it's color" /> [Example with an image]
Here is a break down of the object passed to CLCPshowPicker()
{ _hex: "FF4400", // When a valid hex value is passed, it will set the picker to this hex. Otherwise the picker will not change it's current color [if any]. _x: 12, // If a x coordinate is passed, the picker will move to the x value. Otherwise, the x coordinate from the mouse click will be used. _y: 400 // If a y coordinate is passed, the picker will move to the y value. Otherwise, the y coordinate from the mouse click will be used. // All of these variables are optional }
Feb. 24, 2008 - Update
Fixed a bug in IE where users couldn’t click-drag-highlight other objects within the page.
May 1, 2008 - Update
Fixed a conflict this script had with jQuery. Thanks to Ozh at planetOzh.com for the report!
16 January, 2008
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