Create Color Palettes with Kuler by Adobe

Kuler by Adobe is a great tool for creating color palettes and viewing color palettes created by others. Accessed through a browser, Kuler allows you to easily edit color palettes and save them for use in Adobe applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

Within Adobe Kuler, you can browse palettes created by the Kuler community. You can view the newest, the most popular (based on downloads), the highest rated or a random selection. Keyword searching allows you to search by phrases entered by the creator of the palettes. Clicking a color theme expands it to a full screen view, and you can also go into edit mode to adjust an existing palette for your own needs. With the tags limited to what the user enters, I found the process of browsing existing themes fairly random and would prefer being able to see palettes based on a specific color, style or other variables. For this reason, I found Kuler more powerful for creating your own palettes rather than searching for existing palettes that may suit your needs with some tweaking.

I found the process of creating color palettes to be extremely user-friendly. You can start with an existing palette, or create a new palette from a base color or image. Creating a palette from an image allows you to select various spots in a photo you upload or access from Flickr. This is a powerful feature for graphic designers using a photo as inspiration or trying to create a color palette to match an image that has to be incorporated into a design. After starting a palette from an image, existing theme, or base color, the colors can be adjusted individually or as a whole. I was especially impressed with the color wheel with 5 points (representing each color in a theme) that can be dragged to adjust the palette. Each color can also be fine-tuned by adjusting HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB and HEX values. You can also select a rule to change your palette automatically, including “monochromatic,” “compound” and “shades.” When complete, you can save and download your palettes so they can easily be imported into Adobe software.

In addition to the primary features of Kuler (creating and viewing themes), there is a community area that highlights users with bios, projects and palettes. There is also a section called “Pulse” (in BETA) that tracks color trends and displays them on a color wheel. Finally, a collection of links includes access to the Kuler API, downloadable desktop patterns and color theory resources.