An Entire Custom Color Palette at Your Fingertips, Voila!

Do you ever rip pages from magazines of "wishlist" items or keep pictures of beautifully decorated rooms in a file folder for future projects?  Or maybe you are the resident photographer with thousands of carefully catalogued images spanning every special moment experienced within the family over 20 years?

Photography, in all forms, has a profound effect on our lives.  It can document our memories, influence how we perceive ourselves, evoke feelings of empathy and give our dreams a visual context.  Often we find that when we refer back to our own personal collections of images, however scattered they may be, there are common themes.  One of those themes for instance, may be color or color combinations.

This would be most obvious in pictures from magazines that we have collected to admire or replicate in our homes.  I  love strong colors and there are definitely catalogued pictures of mine that evoke a noticeable feeling  of energy and  happiness when reviewed!

I recently discovered a tool online that has changed my world! Okay, maybe a little overstated, but it is a tool that can take any photographs and upon loading them, can create a color palette from the range of colors in the photo.  Imagine the possibilities!  I have so many images that I look at and think,  "what if I could turn the beautiful colors in this photo into a home studio?"  or "What if I could take this photo of the boys at the beach and use the same colors in a playroom?"

The applications and the potential for inspiration are endless!

Here is a photo I took in the bahamas and I have always loved the colors.

I utilized two different color palette generators to see what magic could be created! The first generator is from a website called bighugelabs.com/colors.php

www.bighugelabs.com/colors.php

The next color palette generator tool I utilized was from a website called www.colourlovers.com/photocopa.

www.colourlovers.com/photocopa

Take a look at some of your photographs and visit one of the sites to give it a try.  You may be surprised at some of the colors that are generated and are perfectly paired.  There are several other sites as well.  Some sites require that you have the URL of the image, which would mean it would need to be on a hosting site like photobucket(which is simple) and some sites only ask you to download the image directly from your computer.  Benjamin Moore, Here we Come!