Inspiration Station: Color Your World

Today, I’m sharing a cool web tool I discovered that makes creativity a real blast!

Chip It! is brought to us by Sherwin Williams – yes, the paint manufacturer. I’ve seen similar tools, but this one’s really neat. What does it do? It generates color palettes based on photographs (or graphics) of your choice.

How does it work? You have a couple of options.

First, you can enter a URL. Suppose you’re surfing the web and come across a picture you like. You adore the color combos and would like to use those same colors in your designs. Enter the URL of the site, pick the desired picture from the array (assuming there’s more than one picture on the page), and click the button. You’ll be rewarded with an expandable color palette containing the main colors which you can save and use later.

You can also upload their bookmarketlet by dragging the icon to your browser’s toolbar, meaning you won’t have to return to the website to get palettes from websites.

Second, you can upload your own photo, but to be honest, I can make color palettes from my own photos all day long. However, you do have that option.

You won’t get hex numbers, but once you have the palette, you can save the image and use it in your graphics editing program. I found it very easy to use, and the URL option did not require registration.

This might come in very handy when you’re viewing all those inspiring Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwaanza sites, and you see a color combination you think will really pop on your card designs.

Have fun!