A Tour of Adobe Color

Adobe Color is a free online tool provided by Adobe. It is accessible through

https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel. It was originally named Adobe Kuler when it first
created, which later changed to Adobe Color.

Adobe Color allows you to generate color palettes (5 colors in each palette) that you can save in
your Adobe Color account (which is free to register). These can then be synced with your
Creative Cloud account, making it accessible through other adobe platforms. In the context of
photo editing, any color palette you have saved in Adobe Color can be viewed in Adobe
Photoshop through Adobe Color Theme. This can be accessed via Window > Extension >
Adobe Color Theme.

The first thing that you will see when accessing Adobe Color is the color wheel. Below the color
wheel, there are five coloured boxes which form the color palette generated based on what is
selected on the color wheel. Below each color box, you will see colour Hex code. A Hex code is
a universal code which generates a particular shade of color. This use of a code is very useful
for designers and creatives who want to recreate an exact colour match for web.

Below the Hex code is the RGB value of that particular color and its brightness. You can move
the slider of each to adjust the color. In the lower left hand corner of the screen, there is drop
down menu for Color Mode. It is set to RGB by default (RGB is the color space for display
monitors). You can change this to other color spaces such as CMYK (for print), HSB and LAB
which can be used for specific purposes and programs.
In the left hand panel of the screen there are several color harmony rules which you can click
on. Clicking each one will set the five circles on the color wheel to display the rule. For example,
clicking Triad will set the circles to form a triangle (hence the name triad). You can move this
around the color wheel to experiment with colour and learn which colors make up the triad color
harmony rule.

On the right of the screen, there is a Save button where you can save your work. At the top of
the screen there is a two tier menu. The first tier of the menu is on top, within the black color
header. Options that you can choose from are Create, Explore, Trends, and Libraries. We will
come to this menu later on. The second tier of the menu is just below, you can choose from
Color Wheel, Extract Theme, Extract Gradient, and Accessible Tools. For the purpose of this
course, you will primarily be using the tier two menu.

The Extract Theme is where you upload an image to be analysed by the software. Clicking on
Extract Theme will bring up the option for you to drag and drop an image into Adobe Color, or
click to browse your computer for an image.
Once your image is uploaded, you will see it appear in the middle with five points on it. These
indicate where the software extracts color to create the color palette, which is displayed right
below. It is impossible for every single color in your image to be on the color palette, so if you
feel a circle is not picking the right color, can you click on it and move it to a color you think
would work better.

Below each color is the Hex code for that color, and you can click the little symbol to its right to
copy that code to your clipboard for use in other programs. On the left of the screen, there are
six options to set your preference for the color palette. The difference between each option is
subtle. If you don’t know what to select, leave it as default, which is Colorful. For me, I often
prefer Muted because that is how I like the colors of my image to be.

If you click on the Color Wheel again, it will bring you back to the color wheel which I have
explained at the beginning of this document. You will notice the color palette of your image is
now transferred to the color palette below the color wheel, and the color wheel displays the
location of these colors on it. This is a very visual way of knowing if the colors in your image fits
into any of the color harmony rules. You can click back and forth between Color Wheel and
Extract Theme, the colors won’t be reset. You might ask how does this help you improve the
colors in your image? Taking the triad color harmony rule as an example, if the color wheel
shows the color palette doesn't quite fit into the triad color harmony rule but close, you can
adjust the colors in editing so that they fit better within the rule. If you are satisfied with the color
palette at this point, you can click the Save button on the right to save it in your library. Don’t
forget to give it a cool name!
Now you can continue to experiment with the options in the tier two menu, the third option is
Color Gradient. As the name implies, Adobe Color creates a color gradient based on the colors
in your image, which you can see in the middle of the screen. You can set the number of
gradient stops on the left. Similar to Extract Theme, you can move the points around the image
to change the gradient. You can save the color gradient into your library by clicking the Save
button on the right of the screen.

Finally, the Accessibility Tool on the tier two menu is a new feature to help those with difficulty
differentiating color. You can learn more about it here -
https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/adobe-color-accessibility-tools.html.

Let’s talk a bit about the tier one menu. Which you don’t really need, except the last one, which
is your color palette library. Everything I have explained so far is done under Create.
In Explore, you can browse through color palettes shared by other Adobe Color users. This is a
great source of inspiration and to help you develop your own colour preferences. You can save
any of these color palettes into your library by clicking on it and selecting ‘Add To Library’ from
the menu on the right.

The ‘Trends’ option is very similar to ‘Explore’ where there are hundreds and thousands of color
palettes for you to browse and get inspired according to what is popular right now. You can save
any of the color palettes in the same way as before.
Extra Resources
The Anatomy of Colour: The Story of Heritage Paints and Pigments by Patrick Baty

Color Fundamentals with 100 Color Schemes by Maitland Graves

The New Munsell Student Color Set by Ron Reed

The Complete Color Harmony, Pantone Edition: Expert Color Information for Professional
Results by June McLeod

Handbook of Color Psychology (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology) by by Andrew J. Elliot,

Mark D. Fairchild, and Anna Franklin.

The Little Book of Colour: How to Use the Psychology of Colour to Transform Your Life by Karen
Haller.