Many businesses we provide services to have 1 or more colors they associate with their own brand, but websites offer great complexity in color and most businesses find that they need to expand their use of color when they begin marketing their business on-line. Complicating this issue is the different ways in which colors can be shared, and perceived by the business, the designers, the web developers, web marketers, and the printers. Without getting into a lengthy technical explanation suffice it to say that computer monitors (which generate light) display color differently than printed materials (that use the reflection of light) and each monitor and printer, depending on their quality and calibration, can provide varying results.

While color calibration can be immensely complex, here are some tools that will provide a means by which to agree upon colors you like with those who need to create and publish content using them.

Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler is a fantastic tool for not only generating color palettes but also provides a means of searching through color palettes created by other users. If you know that you'd like to use "Blue and Red", for example, you can search for all color palettes created by other users using "Blue and Red" and see what shades of these colors mix well together, and what other colors have been used by designers to compliment them. Designers love Kuler because in addition to making the decisinoning process easier these colors can be immediately downloaded and integrated into Adobe applications which saves time and ensures a higher degree of quality.

Color Scheme Designer

This tool provides a slightly different view on color selection, in the literal sense. Colors can be viewed in individual shades, as a triad, or in various other color compliment combinations. What makes this tool unique is the ability to select how the color scheme will be viewed by individuals with different types of color blindness.

Copaso

COPASO is an advanced color palette tool that helps you create color schemes and themes. With a scratch pad to save colors you're working with, a photo tool to extract colors and an advanced color picker and color theory wheel to give you tons of color inspiration. Using COPASO you can save your palettes to a private folder or download them to your local computer. If you're finding COPASO a bit too rich for your color creating tastes, you can always use our basic color palette tool.

Toucan

Toucan is an Aviary tool that enables designers using the Aviary suite of free online design applications to create and modify their own color palettes. The Aviary suite of applications covers a wide array of photo editing, illustration and design tools that are free for use and integrate well with other online applications.

ColoRotate

Perhaps the most novel of online color palette generators is ColorRotate, which offers the ability to interact with the color wheel in 3D. This interface is surprisingly intuitive and makes finding color combinations at bit more entertaining than the other options we've discussed. ColorRotate will soon offer the ability to integrate with Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications.

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