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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.]
Peter Jäger is an expert in colour management that reliably works across the boundaries of printers and monitors, web and print – essentially: cross-media.
Today I received an email in which PANTONE asked how it should orientate its products and services in the future. The users were asked which countries, industries and company sizes they come from, but also what PANTONE products should look like in the future and what customers would be prepared to pay for PANTONE services in the future. Question: How much can PANTONE services cost? PANTONE appears to be orientating itself on the PANTONE Connect prices: All price queries have the lowest price category < $ 7,- / month, i.e. … read more
Over the last few months, we at Proof.de have been thinking about further improving our already very good colour measurement technology in terms of speed and measurement precision. Relatively quickly it became clear that only two devices would come into question: The KonicaMinolta MYIRO-9, the successor of the former FD-9, or the X-Rite ISIS 2 XL. The starting point: Since we at Proof GmbH have 5 proofing devices, the calibration of targets for profile optimisation is a time-critical undertaking for us. Therefore, we had been looking around for an upgrade of … 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
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
In the current issue of Fogra News “Fogra Aktuell” Proof GmbH is involved in two places. Firstly, a summary of the Fogra report on our first FOGRA55 certification for seven-colour printing with extended colour space in CMYKOGV appeared. You can also find more information on our FOGRA55 certification on the Fogra website: https://fogra.org/en/press-releases/fogracert-erste-cpc-zertifizierung-fuer-fogra55-cmykogv-330 and on proofing.de: And secondly, there was a report on the completion of the research project for textile digital printing, FOGRA58, in which we were allowed to investigate and test the proof capability of the new textile … read more
A few days ago Proof GmbH was the first company to be certified for proofing for the new 7C exchange colour space FOGRA55. 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
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
Even almost 9 years after the introduction of the successor colour space PSOCoatedV3, ISOCoatedV2 / FOGRA39 is still the most widespread colour space in Europe. We at Proof GmbH count around 200 jobs from time to time for the German Printing and Media Industries Federation, among others. In the last count, proofs in ISOCoatedV2 accounted for around 68% of all proof jobs at our company. This is a clear sign of the continued widespread use of the colour space. ISOCoatedV2: From the classic colour space to the beacon of the … read more
After Eddy Hagen pointed out in this posts, that there were some major colour deviations between the brand new PANTONE Solid Coated Guide 2023 and the previous version especially for the PANTONE 2635 C, I was curious to lookup the same colours in the new PANTONE Color Bridge Coated Guide of 2023 and compare the colours with the previous version. I measured a dE00 of 8,15 between the two colours that Eddy mentioned, which is really far apart from how accurate PANTONE colours should match between the different PANTONE guides. … read more