All Color Matters

Selecting web colors for the general population and color vision deficiency users can present some challenges. In order to satisfy both audiences (as well as client needs), the web boasts some free tools to help designers make sound choices. Using the accessibility standards set by the WC3 ( World Wide Web Consortium )  Contrast-A  (a.k.a. Dasplankton) is a website that provides tools to build, preview, save and print custom color combinations all on-the-fly. With a highly functional and well designed interface, Contrast A offers a feature for producing hardcopy of your chosen swatches with a key indicating proper contrast for WC3 compliance. The site also displays text sampling of body copy and the ability to save custom palettes. For launched websites, checkmycolors.com will do an audit on foreground/background colors as well as DOMs (Document Object Model). After the review, the website builds a laundry list of all hex colors with their corresponding HTML usage. ...

Whenever a painting project in our household deems the close examination of a new hue, marital bliss always gets tested. Finding agreement with my husband can be a monumental accomplishment since we both make our living in the visual arts. To try and keep the creative peace, an excursion is made to the nearest big box home improvement store for 2 dozen paint chip samples. Word to the wise: never buy a can of paint based on what the paint chip looks like in the store! To circumvent any missteps and encourage a democratic approach, color chips are taped individually inside the room to be painted. We live with them for several days under different light conditions—insuring that the color won’t be hated after being permanently affixed. Many a curious visitor to our home has seen this technique, and often feels compelled to offer their take on the selections too (often tipping the balance for a vote to the opposing side). Even if agreement is finally made on a color, we’ve gone the ext...

One of the best free online tools I’ve seen for creating on-the-fly RGB color. Color Scheme Designer boasts an attractive and user friendly interface that delivers RGB percentages and Hexadecimal codes in large color swatches.The best feature on this website is the ability to preview your color choice through the eyes of a color vision deficiency (color blind) individual. The website lists the eight acquired or inherited conditions and allows the user to easily navigate through each one. There’s also an area where you can preview two types of prototype webpages that integrate various combinations of color with rollovers and sample text for mono, complementary, triad, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic. This preview can be done with or without the color vision deficiency option. Finally text samples can be generated on the color swatches in white, gray or black to circumvent any issues with contrast. Designers will find this to be an invaluable when making those critical color...

ColorChooser offers the flexibility to create RGB and hexadecimals colors on-the-fly using the provided color wheel or by taking a photo from your iPod/iPhone’s camera. Other features: Selection of colors or color schemes based on monochromatic, complementary, analogous, triad and tetrad groupings. Gives numeric values for colors in RGB, hexidecimal. Ability to customize your own color scheme, save, load unlimited scheme as well. Can email a color scheme. Will let you take a photo, or choose one from your library to grab a color sample while giving a numeric readout of it. A few features that should be included in the next release should be the ability to enter in values, or sample objects through the camera first—before taking a photo. ColorChooser App by Bynomial