palette |ˈpalit|
noun
a thin board or slab on which an artist lays and mixes colors.
• the range of colors used by a particular artist or in a particular picture : I choose a palette of natural, earthy colors.
• (in computer graphics) the range of colors or shapes available to the user.
ORIGIN late 18th cent.: from French, diminutive of pale ‘shovel,’ from Latin pala ‘spade.’
Welcome to my first tutorial! Although it’s intended for the novice designer, there are tips here for finding source material that others may find useful too.
Let’s get started!
Choosing a color palette for a project can be a challenge for designers. Designers who create physical objects often work with Pantone guides, fabric swatches, or paint chips. While some web designers may use these tools too, many others will not stray far from their computers when figuring out a color scheme. Novice designers especially may not have the array of resources that more experienced designers have had years to collect nor the money it takes to purchase a Pantone library. There are a number of good resources for color palettes including Colour Lovers. However, I find that simply looking at colors alone, not in a larger context, doesn’t really work for me.
One bit of advice I’ve often seen is to take a photo that you like, open it up in Photoshop, and use the eye dropper tool to sample different colors in the image. In this tutorial I’ll recommend several sources for images and outline the steps to create a simple color palette in Photoshop.
Inspiration
Art reproductions in books or on postcards are an excellent source for color palettes. Expensive, beautifully printed art books are readily available at the public library, and if you live near or are visiting an art museum, you can pick up inexpensive reproductions in the form of postcards at the museum shop.
Flickr is a good source for images, and because of Creative Commons licensing, you can use many of the photos there for personal or commercial use as well as for color inspiration.
If you already buy them or can get cast-offs, high-end fashion magazines like Vogue have loads of images that were created by professional stylists and photographers who have labored to put together a pleasing or interesting composition of colors and textures. Choose from advertisements and editorial content. Rip out the pages and save them for reference.
If you don’t have access to free fashion magazines and wouldn’t be caught dead buying one, check out The Sartorialist, a fashion blog. The Sartorialist has excellent taste and a good eye for framing his subject. He uses a small aperture on his camera to throw the background out of focus, turning what might be distracting or unattractive into softness and color.
This photo of Daniel Radcliffe, from the September issue of Vogue, appealed to me for several reasons. The tones in the image reminded me of the work of Elliot Jay Stocks, a talented and influential designer who is well known for his grunge style. The colors in this image would be perfect for developing a grunge influenced project. The contrasts in the picture are also appealing, such as rough (the wood, the wool suit, the beard growth) and smooth (the shirt, the smooth areas of skin) and dark and light. The pallor of the skin gives the image a preternatural quality that is also attractive in a sort of dark gothic way.
Create a palette in Photoshop
If you’re working with a scanned image, you may need to descreen it if your scanner does not come with an automatic descreen. There’s a good article at Scantips about descreening in Photoshop.
In Photoshop create a document 1800 x 1200 pixels. This document will be the blank palette which you will fill with color. Place five guide lines 300 pixels apart. You will then have six strips. Use the marquee tool to draw a box around the first strip. Make your window slightly larger than your document and click just out outside the document in order to capture the full strip.
Now Command/Control + Shift + N to create a new layer. Place each color on a new layer so that you can easily rearrange them later. Next, use the eyedropper (keyboard shortcut I) tool to sample an area of the photo. You don’t have to adhere religiously to the sample; I often adjust it to what my eye perceives as a more pleasing tone or to a feeling I’m trying to convey. Press G to select the paint bucket tool, and you have the first color of your palette. Create a new layer, select the marquee tool, and drag the marquee to the next strip. Sample, fill, and repeat these steps until your palette is filled.
Select the move tool, and check auto-select. Move around the colors until you are pleased with the organization of your palette. You don’t have to have as many as six colors, and you can see that I eliminated one of the colors from this palette, or you could have more.
Put your palette to use
Here is an image of a palette in action. The Apple Command key symbol was created by following Veerle Pieter’s tutorial. She’s a wonderful designer who frequently publishes very useful tutorials on her website.
Photo credits
Daniel Radcliffe from the September 2008 issue of Vogue magazine; woman with umbrella from The Sartorialist, “On the Street…..Wet & Styled, NYC ,” September 18, 2008; Danny Masterson at Lollapalooza from Style.com; woman in black-and-white jumper from The Sartorialist, “On the Street…..Fay, NYC,” September 06, 2008; “Amitabha Buddha and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas” from The Art of Korea: A Book of Postcards; “Green Bottle Fly” by jpctalbot from Flickr.
