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Designers constantly need to be inspired to create new colour creations. Often pictures are chosen as the starting point for a new colour composition. Or there is a leading colour for which further colours must be found in order to create a harmonious colour palette.
There are several websites on the net that are perfect for such colour breakdowns and colour inspirations for graphic artists and designers. We have summarized the best of them here in an overview.
1. Adobe Color CC, formerly Adobe Kuler:
Adobe Color CC is the Adobe social colour network. Designers can test and evaluate colours and develop different colour schemes and colour combinations. These can then be downloaded directly for use in Adobe products such as Adobe Creative Suite. https://color.adobe.com
2. COLOURlovers.com
On Colourlovers, users can create colour palettes, rate them and exchange information in blogs. In addition, the site offers numerous articles on colour, shapes and much more. https://www.colourlovers.com
3. colorcombos.com
With Colorcombos, users can experiment with different colours and colour
Paletton or the Color Scheme Designer is a powerful and user-friendly colour wheel for selecting colours. Graphic designers can start right away to assemble colour collections and select basic colours. http://paletton.com
5. colr.org
Colr.org is a fun tool that allows you to quickly and easily generate colour palettes from Flickr images or your own uploaded images. Images can also be processed from other websites. http://www.colr.org
6. Pantone
Pantone is the mother of all colour pages. Not only will you find detailed information on all Pantone colours and colour fans, PantoneLIVE and MyPantone also provide community-driven services where designers can create their own palettes and get inspiration from others. http://www.pantone.de
7. HKS
HKS offers more than just the traditional colour system on its website. With the Colourmatch magazine and the design section you will find interesting articles and inspiration on the subject of colour with HKS. http://www.hks-farben.de
8. Colorspire
Colorspire is another simple tool to generate individual colour palettes. Web designers can directly view a rudimentary type of website colour scheme of the chosen colours. http://www.colorspire.com/
9. Colormunki
In colour management circles, the inexpensive measuring device is rather mocked, but the website does offer a powerful potential for designers. Colormunki is a chic and powerful colour application where designers can create colours, save colour palettes and view other designers’ palettes. There’s also a lot of background information from the X-Rite website. http://www.colormunki.com
10. Color Palette FX
Color Palette FX is also a simple and clear application for creating colour palettes based on images. Own images for palette generation can be uploaded without any problems. http://www.palettefx.com [Edit: No longer available.]
Several errors have crept into the new PANTONE 2023 fan decks. In both the PANTONE Solid Coated and the Solid Uncoated color fans, there are colours for which the new ink formulations are incorrect. In the PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Coated fan 2023, PANTONE 107 C and PANTONE 108 C have absolutely identical ink recipes, as well as PANTONE 113 C and PANTONE 114 C. As the colors differ, this cannot be the correct. Several errors in the PANTONE Solid Uncoated fan 2023 In the PANTONE Solid Uncoated fan 2023 … read more
A few days ago Proof GmbH was the first company to be certified for proofing for the new 7C exchange colour spaceFOGRA55. Fogra has developed characterisation data for extended multicolour printing with the printing colours CMYKOGV – i.e. cyan, magenta, yellow, black (contrast), orange, green and violet – FOGRA55 as part of a research project over the past few years. The characterisation data and the ICC profile Ref-ECG-CMYKOGV_FOGRA55_TAC300.icc have been published on the Fogra website in recent weeks. We have now carried out the certification via GMG ColorProof, as … read more
Peter Jäger is an expert in colour management that reliably works across the boundaries of printers and monitors, web and print – essentially: cross-media.
In recent years, various problems have arisen with our previous proof paper supplier. On the one hand, we sometimes had to wait more than three months for paper deliveries; on the other hand, we sometimes had significant problems with batch-to-batch discrepancies, surface defects and much more. After lengthy deliberations, we decided in December to replace all the paper. We therefore received pallets of new paper at the turn of the year, which we are now gradually incorporating into our production. There will be no hard cut, but the new papers … read more
The most important colour management event takes place every two years in Munich: the Fogra Colour Management Symposium. Once again this year, all professionals are invited to make the pilgrimage to Munich: two days of lectures, discussions and a Bavarian evening await participants. Matthias Betz, owner of proof.de, will also be there again: for many years, he has been taking advantage of the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues and friends, learn about new technologies, hardware and software, and talk to colleagues from Fogra, freieFarbe, GMG and many more. In … read more
From now on you can order proofs for metal decor printing on white sheet metal at proof.de: The ICC profile for Fogra60 is Metal-Printing_MPC1_FOGRA60.icc
Whether it’s a large global corporation or a small company, the following often applies to designs or redesigns today: we develop everything for digital first.
Anyone who has reinstalled or updated their i1 Profiler app in the last few weeks has been confronted with disturbing news: X-Rite announced directly in the start window that it would no longer support its enormously popular i1Display and i1Pro2 devices. Users of the i1Pro 2 devices and i1iO 2 tables, which are extremely popular in printing and colour management, will be particularly hard hit by the announcement: An investment of €6,000 is quickly consigned to the electronic scrap heap. But what can you do if you own such a … read more
In recent weeks, there have been lengthy discussions on the Fogra digital printing mailing list as to whether a research project should be launched to define standardised tonal value gradations for spot colours. What is this all about? In the field of CMYK and seven-colour printing, the definition of clear, printable and proofable standards is well established and has been tried and tested in practice. If the paper or paper class is known and defined, a measuring standard such as M0/M1/M2 has been established and the content of optical brighteners … read more
Adobe products are ideal for image retouching and layout and handle RGB and CMYK colour profiles very well. However, when editing and retouching grayscale images, for example for a black-and-white photo book, the experience is quite different. Suddenly, images look completely different in InDesign than they do in Photoshop, and even when exporting the image to PDF, greyscale images are suddenly treated differently. This article explains where the problems lie with black-and-white images and greyscale profiles in InDesign and Photoshop layouts, and how you can work in a more ‘colour-accurate’ … read more