Deke didn’t believe me the other day when I mentioned that Adobe’s Flash-o-rific color-selecting gizmo, Kuler, could create a color palette based on a photograph. (Of course, now, he claims not to remember the conversation at all. It’s his grueling schedule, not the Bombay Sapphire, I’m sure.)
But it’s true, Deke. And relatively easy. Start at the Kuler page of Adobe Labs. Click Create at the top left, then choose Create from Photo. You can upload an image from your hard drive or from your Flickr account. Kuler has five “Moods” available for the creation of its trademark five-color theme: Colorful, Bright, Muted, Deep and Dark. Colorful seems to be the default, and you can create a Custom collection by moving any one or all of the five targets that Kuler picks to other spots on your image.
For my sample image here, Kuler included an odd pinkish color that was really a trick of the light on the orange number, so just I picked up the target and moved it to a black part of the jersey. (Despite black being a fairly predominant color in the image, none of the moods placed a black target.) It also gave me two relatively similar greens, so I moved one of the green targets to the darker foliage on the right.
If you register for a free account, you can name your theme, save it to your collection, seek love and approval with the Kuler community, and download it as an Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) file. As an .ase file, your Kuler output is not confined to its web existence, you can import the file into your Creative Suite swatches palettes. In InDesign for example, you just choose Load Swatches from the Swatches Palette fly-out menu, navigate to your saved .ase file, click OK, and voila, the five colors become swatches. I presume this works roughly the same for the other apps as well. And if Adobe’s John Nack has his way, one day a Kuler-like thing will just appear as a Flash-based mutable palette in your favorite CS application.
The result, a palette that pretty much sums up this years’ baseball season. I’m craving a sno-cone.
The conversation that never happened
This column reminds me of my dad. When my dad couldn’t remember something we kids had said, or he couldn’t hear us when we were bellowing at him from the other side of the house, he’d deny anything had happened. If we balked (as we always did), he’d say, “I didn’t hear you. Therefore, you didn’t say anything.” This rather frustrated us, but thanks to Colleen’s helpful posting, I believe I now understand. You see, Dad’s meaning was threefold: First, a real conversation needs both speaker and listener to occur, so without him listening, there was no conversation. Secondly, as a general rule of law, anything he thought trumped anything we thought. Third, if he didn’t torment us, we’d get uppity and anarchy would ensue. I believe all points are applicable here as well. In conclusion, thanks for the article, you’re right that I didn’t know about this feature, you dreamt the whole thing.
DEKE, QUICK!!! STRUCKLEY HAS LOCKSED AGAIN!
I mean the spambot has struck again… at least so it seams as the below post is all over the place ...
Greets,
Dukey
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“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
- Douglas Adams