| OR |
« 2 Simple YouTube Video Enhancements | Free Travel Slideshows Fueling TripAdvisor’s Massive Marketing Effort »
|
Thank goodness, there are free color tools that have the power to shape your web dreams! For, colors are an inseparable element of our lives, and who knows that better than the artist who uses them to create magic that enthralls people!
You may think a webmaster is an unlikely connoisseur of colors, but truth be told, he is as wary and aware of colors as a painter who brushes the canvas to earn his bread. And now, even the video makers are starting to use colors intelligently and with suaveness as the situation requires of him to stand out in the crowd.
Even as we appreciate the millions of colors we actually see every day, putting them in a webpage – or a video for that matter – is not easy, because that requires knowing the color’s hexadecimal code that the browser understands.
Fortunately there are quite a few excellent free color tools that enable you to pick and choose the right shade you want along with the hexadecimal code. We will take a close look at 3 of them.
Color Blender
Color Blender is a simple tool to use. To start, place the cursor in the first input box called Color1 and click any color from the 216 on the right side palette.
Repeat the same action for the second input box, Color 2. The next step is to select a midpoint, and click the button ‘blend’.
The tool immediately gives you a list of some 9 colors of which at least 7 are the blends of the 2 primary colors chosen. See the following image.
All the blended colors as well as the primary colors are represented by their hexadecimal codes. If you wish to get the RGB values, simply click on either the RGB or RGB% tab.
To try a different combination, click Clear, and start again.
Color Scheme Designer
I love Color Scheme Designer. It’s flash-based and full of features in this single page.
The page opens with a big hue circle. As you move a tiny indicator circle on it, you’ll find it moves on a circular path. When you slide it from ‘warm’ to ‘cold’, the color scheme in a rectangle on the right also changes. See the image below.
If you now move the cursor on the colors in the rectangle, you will get the Hex code popping out in a tooltip.
Scroll down the page, and click Adjust Scheme. Here try out different saturation and contrast, and grab the color you want.
There is a lot you can do with Color Scheme Designer. It is a fabulous tool and fun to use.
ColorPic
Our third choice is ColorPic, yet another free color tool from IconIco. It is different from the earlier ones in that it does not give you any color on its own. It rather allows you to pick a color from the computer screen.
ColorPic is a free desktop tool. Download it from this site and install on your computer. The following is an image of the tool.
Since it helps you to obtain the hex code of any color on the screen, it is an ideal tool to find out the colors other websites have used that you like to use for your need.
In addition to picking color, ColorPic also helps in other ways.
In the Mixer section you can choose any color based on color sliders, hue palette, rainbow palette, and hex polygon. For each color you choose, you get the HSV (hue, saturation, value) and RGB parameters, and also CMYB percentages for it, which is a great help.
Watch the video below that shows how to use the free color tools described above. You may like to watch it on YouTube instead.
Lastly, before checking out, let me put you through my article on some excellent free photo editing tools that can be used online. They are versatile, and – you will find – quite useful for making web videos.
Share your views and comments below.
This article of June 20th, 2011 is authored by Partha Bhattacharya, who runs this website. Partha also creates video-based e-learning course for clients, and when time permits, writes guest articles for selected sites.
