One of my favorite parts of designing is getting to play with color. There are a large variety of free tools on the internet for creating color schemes or just discovering new and interesting colors to work with. If you're looking for inspiration or just some free tools, here's a list of the sites we use most often at DotConcepts.

Color Schemes and Palettes

• Color Combos - Test your palettes and check complementary colors for any color in your scheme or check out their color scheme library.
• Color Hunter - Browse or create color schemes from images. Can use either online or uploaded images. Search their library by tag or hex code for more schemes.
• Color Scheme Designer - Pick a color and create a variety of different schemes from monochromatic to accented analogic. Light and dark page examples show your color scheme on a layout.
• Colour Lovers - I can't get enough of this site; from trends to individual colors to these top color schemes, its an endless resource for all things color.
• Color Match Remix - A basic color matching tool with a dynamic preview. Other than being limited by allowing only a base color change, its a quick way to see what colors you might be missing from your palette.
• Colorjack - A fantastic resource overall; this particular view shows the most used color schemes. Their "Spy" view lets you see what color schemes people have created recently. There are many other useful tools here as well.
• ColorSchemer Palettes - User created schemes sorted by highest rated; they can be imported into the ColorSchemer Studio (commercial software).
• - A great reference for aspects of color theory, application and other color concepts.
• Liquidsoft - Tutorial on Color Theory - An introduction to color theory. For a more in depth discussion, see Wikipedia's article on color theory
• Pantone's Color Trends - The latest trends and color reports from Pantone.
• Sherwin Williams Color Trends 2010 - This years color forecast from Sherwin Williams and archives from previous years.
• Wikipedia's List of Colors - Sorted by name and together in shade, its all the color names Wikipedia has an article on (just in case you ever need to know what color Wenge really is).

Are we missing your favorite color resource? Leave us a comment here so we can review it and possibly add it to the list.

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from designmoo.com on Sun, 01/17/2010 - 01:39

This was featured in designmoo.com! Here is the link to vote it up and promote it: http://www.designmoo.com/node/19536

Story added

from TheWebBlend.com on Sun, 01/17/2010 - 01:34

Your story was featured in TheWebBlend.com! Here is the link to vote it up and promote it: http://thewebblend.com/WebDesign/Color_Tools_for_Web_Designers

I'm posting this to keep track of all the links. I like this kind of stuff