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2009-03-31
Most of us are familiar with pink, green and purple, but do you know what colour vitellary is? Or zinnober? Or kermes? (No, the last one is not a popular puppet frog from the Muppet Show.) Find these and lots more colours with strange names at the Colourlovers colour study series.
2006-09-04
My favourite colour is blue; sometimes cornflower blue; sometimes navy blue; At other times I prefer to spell the word the American way — ‘color’ — without the ‘u’. Sometimes I just can’t decide what couleur to use for a design. That’s when these sites come in useful:
Firstly there is the fun but unsophisticated 100 random colors. It’s exactly that: a page full of squares of color, each with the name and hex number clearly shown. Choose from a hundred normal or a hundred pastel colors, depending on how the fancy takes you.
The Color Contrast Check is useful for when you want to ensure maximum clarity for text. Not everyone wants plain black on white (or white on black) all the time; and when you go off the beaten track as far as color is concerned, an acceptable level of contrast can be hard to determine. At times like that, this site is invaluable.
If you find an image whose colors you like, the Color Palette Generator is a tool that lets you input the URL of the image, and gives you the corresponding color palette.
For some interesting palettes or single colors, go to Colour Lovers. Sometimes it can be unintentionally amusing: one visitor will have discovered, say, brown, and will decide they like it; they will submit the color brown, giving it a new name (’Chokolate’, perhaps) as if they have discovered a new planet. Colour Lovers is still well worth a visit though.
And finally, if you just like twiddling sliders to come up with new color combinations, then try any or all of these:
Best viewed in Firefox — but then, isn't everything? | Clogs image by Nokton under a CC licence. The original pic is much bigger and in full colour. Go see it.