NEW! Color Resource

[blmcewan]

I just read about and began browsing a new online color resource from Adobe. http://kuler.adobe.com

Plainly put it's a forum/blog for coordinating color swatches. You can browse the most popular, newest, highest rated. They also have a tutorial on how to use the site. It's better if you sign-in/sign-up with an Adobe ID, so you can create your own and download those you like as an Adobe Swatch Exchange file for easy loading into Photoshop.

For those that have PSE, here's a tool that I often recommend for lifting colors from anything on your screen. http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/ It's the ultimate color "eyedropper" tool that knows no boundaries. Use it to grab colors from the kuler website and then manually add them to your PSE Color Swatches (TIP: the HTML code is the easiest to work with from the Color Picker tool because you can Copy one code from there once you have grabbed it and then paste it into a new swatch in PSE)

Enjoy the resources and tools and have a COLORFUL time!

[April]

That is FUN!!! I've bookmarked those! I've seen other sites similar to the Kuler one but Kulers is the best. That create part is way to fun! Thanks so much for sharing this.

I taught in a class a while back that you can take the colors you like from websites and change your paper colors on our CDs to those colors using this tip:
http://www.digitalscrapbookmemories.com/tips/changingColors.asp

There is a more exact way to match colors in Elements than I have listed on that tip but I can't think of it right now. Does anyone remember? I know clicking "colorize" in the hue/saturation pop up box changes colors differently but I can't remember if that was the magic answer I found a while back.

[holly koenigsfeld]

oh i would LOVE to know! i use pse and just go through hue / saturation too. i'm never sure if my colors are exactly right since i just go by sight. and i usually scrap on my laptop, which is BAD i know, but it's much more accessible while i'm with the kids.

[April]

Glad you asked. I just changed the tutorial on my link above to tell you how.

Basically all you do is this:

Use the eyedropper to choose the color you want to change your paper to then choose Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue Saturation.

Click on the little box that says colorize in the Hue Saturation box and you are done.

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This works best with simple papers but try all sorts of papers and see if you like the results.

Here is an example of one I did. You'll notice the color I wanted is selected for the foreground color in the toolbox. I then changed only a portion of the paper by selecting that part of the paper. I wanted you to see what the paper looked like before and after. I also kept the birthday paper on the screen so you could see which paper I was trying to match to.

Isn't this fun?