Kuler Than Cool

Feb 09. , 2009 3 Comments

Today I’m kicking off a weekly series which I’ve lovingly dubbed the “Web Monkey’s Toolbox”. Each post in this series will focus on one web application or web site that will make life easier for those of us who spend our time creating web sites, graphics, and writing code for the web.

These posts will run on Mondays to hopefully give you web monkeys out there that upcoming week to find some time to try out the cool little helpers. Enjoy!

Kuler is a very, well, cool free, online color scheme picker from Adobe. If you find yourself at times being “colorly challenged” but know what you think looks nice, you can browse themes created by other Kuler users, by browsing their “Newest,” “Most Popular,” “Highest Rated” categories. If you’re really indecisive, Kuler can show you themes randomly.

If you’re in the mood to create you can make up your own color “themes” with 5 color swatches each, name the theme and post it on the site for others to review and possibly use in their next project.

Here are some of the snazzy features of Kuler:

If you have Adobe Air, you can import Kuler themes directly into CS3
You can create themes from Flickr images
Developers can apply for a Kuler API key
With your Adobe ID you can create, save and download themes.
For you CS4 users, you can access Kuler from the program of your choice

The Kuler community seems to be very active which makes the constantly rotating list of themes that much more enjoyable. Be forewarned, though: Kuler is a definite time suck for any of you who enjoy looking at pretty colors. Just when you tell yourself “Okay, one more look…” you’ll come across a theme named something inviting like “Sushi Maki,” “Freshaliciousness Remix” or “Steampunk” and find yourself clicking away.

If you would like to submit something to be shown here, let me know!