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Kuler1
Picking a nice, coherent color scheme for your web site can be ticklish task. I know I’m always worried that I’ll pick something too clich?, to boring, or just downright hideous. Fortunately, there are some tools that help you out when you’re stumped for choice.

Adobe Systems, the folks behind Photoshop and Illustrator has this cool online color palette tool called Kuler in which you can create your own color palettes, share them with others, look at the palettes that other people have created, and even download the palette as a theme to use with your Adobe Creative Suite 2 software.

Kuler2
Even if you don’t download the particular theme, you can still dig deeper and get the RGB codes and the Hex numbers for the particular colors. While I don’t think that there is a “Web safe color option” in these themes, it’s still good for seeing what kind of color combinations you and other people can come up with.

As cool as this tool is, there are a couple caveats. One, you’ll need to upgrade to Flash Player 9 since it’s built in Flash 9. I get the sneaking suspicion that they’re doing this so everyone will upgrade to the latest version of Flash Player…but while it’s an inconvenience it’s a minor one. Second, although you can look at the different color combinations, if you want to download a theme, see the RGB codes or create your own theme, you’ll need to get an Adobe ID. Signing up for an Adobe account is free and fairly easy though. So you can try out Kuler here:
http://kuler.adobe.com/

1581802366.01. Aa Scmzzzzzzz -3Another tool that doesn’t rely on Flash or an Adobe ID is an old standby that I’ve been using for years. The Color Index by Jim Krause is color reference book that has over 1100 color combinations in both CMYK and RGB modes. There’s a whole section that deals only with web safe color combinations and palettes are divided by mood and intensity. I’ve bought this book years ago and it sits right next to my computer. I still reach for it on occasion to help get me out of a color rut, marking some combinations for possible use and sometimes taking similar palettes and doing my own mixes from the suggested palettes.

Do you have a favorite color combo tool that you use that I haven’t mentioned? Leave a comment and let me know!