Make Quick & Easy Colour Palettes
This short Photoshop tutorial will show you an easy and effective way of making colour palettes.
1. Document Creation
Let’s start by making a new document in Photoshop. You can use whatever size you want, something fairly small though, preferably. I used a document size of 210 x 360 pixels.
Leave your background color as white (#ffffff).
2. Base Squares
In your new document make a bunch of random-colored squares. For this you can use the rectangular marquee tool. Make a selection, color it, move the selection and color it again. Try to use as many different colors here as possible.
I made each of my squares 40 x 40 pixels in size.
3. Colorize
In your layers window, add a solid color layer by clicking the create new fill or adjustment layer button, then choosing solid color from the drop down menu.
After you’ve done this, choose any old color for the Solid Color adjustment layer.
4. Settings
Lower the opacity for the color layer to 80%, then change the layer mode to Color.
Since I used a pinkish color I’m left with this palette:
Now you have a very cool colour palette that you can use in your design that will work well together. Save your images as .gif images and open them up any time you need a nice colour palette.
Credit to Mash11 from deviantART.
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12 responses
Very useful.
I can recommend http://colorblender.com/ , it is more handy.
Excellent tutorial,
For colors combinations I use http://www.colorschemer.com
It is really very useful.
Uhm.. wow? I’ve been wondering about this for ever…
Thanks!
very nifty tip, thanks for sharing! =)
Awesome. I’ve used colorschemer and colorblender, but the color schemes from them are either bland (all shades of one color) or painful to look at (way too contrasting). This is perfect.
Awesome! What a genius tip. I’ve been trying to figure this out for ages.
Awesome!!! Definitely using this idea… I haven’t been able to figure out a great way to make color palettes… : )
This was very,very,very useful! Thank you so much!
This is very helpful for a newbie like me in choosing color that match.
Thanks for the tut.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to go from black to light gray? Using Hue to colorize it. Then it won’t be similar colors like yours…
That’s a pretty nifty little trick! Thank you.