Helpful Tools for Picking a Color Scheme

Who doesn't love color?  For many creatives, color is at the root of their designs and greatly impacts the feel of the project.  Some days inspiration comes easily, but for those times when you're stumped on selecting a color palette, here's a few (free) resources that can help.

Think Ink by Neenah  - Think Ink is a free iPhone application that puts powerful design and color theory tools in the palm of your hand. Create palettes based on colors captured in your photos, your creation of CMYK or RBG values, or Neenah paper colors.Create custom color palettes based on the Dewey Color System®, the world’s only validated, color-based personality testing instrument.  Customize your color palettes in RGB and/or CMYK values displayed for easy reference. Choose from four different color palettes: Subdue, Pop, Classic and Blend. View your color palettes in alternate formats and in type samples. Share you color palettes directly from your iPhone with friends, vendors or clients via email. To see how it works, check out this demo.

Kuler by Adobe is a free online application for generating color themes, also available as an Android App (for now). Explore, search, and create new color themes right where you work with the Kuler panels built into Adobe Illustrator® CS5, Photoshop® CS5, InDesign® CS5.5, Fireworks® CS5, and Flash® Professional CS5.5 software.

Color Scheme Designer - currently in its third iteration, is free but is a  Kickstarter project looking for funding to keep it alive. Featuring color-blind conversion alogorithms, iPhone/iPad app, and a searchable database of color themes created by users.

Colourlovers - an is a creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes and patterns, discuss the latest trends and explore colorful articles.