[jimhefferon]

Sadly, I lack the ability to generate good palettes. I just have a hole in my brain where that ability should go. So a palette generator is no help, for me.

Is there a good, reasonably active, site with a list of palettes that talented people were good enough to make Freely available? I used to go to kuler.adobe.com (spelling?) but I think it changed and I've since had trouble finding one that is as good.

[krsdcbl]

If i spare a tiny bit of advice, it would be this: There's a big misunderstanding about what makes a good palette, and color palette tools are largely the culprit.

Creating a usable palettes has very little to do with the usual "find five colors that look good together" approach and is actually a much more tangible and technical process.

You'll want to start with ONE color. Create a step of shades onto your background color & check it for possible needs of hue and saturation tweaks along the grading.

Find a complementary dull, almost gray color and develop the same kinds of shade.

You're mostly done now. It's often advisable to find a secondary, complementary color to go with it, but that's it pretty much it for the breadth of the palette you'll actually need in most ui design projects.

Going off most of these typical 5c color palette proposals that look good on their own will almost never lead you to a good and foremost usable color scheme, it's nice to look at but the way these are used make it appear like you need half a dozen primary colors. What you'll actually want is one brand color and matching greyscale, and then work off the requirements of elements that need to stand out.

Just like with typography, heavy limitation but subtle alterations of your palette is what leads to a good looking, coherent design.

[uxamanda]

Agree with you on all of your points. In case anyone is looking, https://coolors.co/generate is a good site for finding shades of a color (hover a color and go to the shade section).

[maxsavin]

All you need is to pick a base color for your brand. Paletter will then generate different schemes and palettes for you based on that color. And you can play with it and explore :) I'm the same as you haha

[jimhefferon]

Thank you. At the site I mentioned, I found that I would pick some palettes that I thought suited my needs, and found that they did not follow any of the standard patterns (complementary, etc.). So I came to the sense that the patterns are fine as far as they go, but that they do not go all the way.

[zachrose]

But it seems like there's a lot more that goes into making a palette specifically for user interfaces: https://design.gs.com/news/color

[maxsavin]

There's a difference, part of it is a matter of a taste, like picking a color for your band, part of is it logical, like accessibility, color psychology, etc.

I'd say most people struggle with the taste part, and that's what Paletter helps with. The logical side of things can be learned quickly.

[dillondoyle]

https://www.colourlovers.com/

Though it's gotten ad spammy it seems

[jimhefferon]

Thank you. I've bookmarked it. (I am fine with ads; although it can be overdone, of course.)

I'll mention that one thing that is appealing is that the license is clear. I use the palettes for some Freely-licensed projects and so I redistribute the materials. In many places it is hard to tell what is allowed (I have a number of times spent some effort tracking down a creator only to be eventually unable to get more than "It is free" for a license statement.)

[dillondoyle]

? that's crazy to me! how can one claim to copyright a combination of colors, especially if it's not in combination like copying the pepsi logo or seomthing

[jimhefferon]

We claim credit for the combination of letters that we call a short story, or even for a slogan ("I'm loving it."). We claim credit for a short song, or many other combinations of atomic components.

The fact that I can't do it means, to me, that there is creativity involved. Creators deserve rights. That's fair enough, it seems to me.

I was looking for a site where creators had generously made some available under a Free license.

[willio58]

Used to go here all the time but my god has it fallen off. On mobile it looks horrible

[dillondoyle]

yeah it looks and loads horrible now and doesn't seem as active. but i have found some really new ideas from there!

[swyx]

here's my collection of color guides with some preselected colors: https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#col...

[maxsavin]

thanks for adding Paletter :)