"Choosing Your Colors - Color Inspiration from Photos"

"A colorist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing."- Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French painter, sculptor, & lithographer

The awesome thing about color is that it's free online, so you can choose to your heart's content. Great! But sometimes color inspiration is needed. So you might asked, "Where do I get color inspiration?".

Color Inspiration from Photos

Photos are a great source of color inspiration. If you have a picture with great colors then use a color picker like ColorPic to choose your colors. Then make your own color palette, but limit your colors. Choose two to four colors. Generally duotone (2 colors) and monotone (1 color) websites have strong intensity.

I used this awesome photo of Table Mountain (Cape Town, South Africa) to pick some colors using ColorPic. I love the colors in this photo. There are many shades of blue, purple and pink. I love the cool mood with a tinge of warmth that this photo evokes.

Table Mountain
Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

There are many colors to choose from, but I limited my choice and created a ten color palette, as a starting point.

Then I chose four colors that had good color harmony. Remember, duotone (2 colors) and monotone (1 color) websites generally have strong intensity. Now I have a great color scheme to colorise a website.

There are so many color schemes that you can generate from photos. Your possibilities are endless.

Read this great article by Suzanne Stephens, "Web Page Color Scheming - Using Your Photos", that really shows you the potential of color scheming using photos. You can take a sneak peak at the finished website she created using using photos for the color scheming at Endless Rivers. Amazing color combinations that really capture the mood of the website.

So color scheming can be fun and easy. So use your photos for some color inspiration. Your options are limitless. Your imagination is your only limitation. Be a kid and play and create.