digital resources

Okay, so I feel stupid. I totally didn’t realize that the beta.dailycolorscheme.com site had not been updated in a couple of years. So, I got to looking around for other color scheme resources and found one that’s even better. Kuler.adobe.com comes from the Adobe labs and you can use your Adobe login to access the goods. The tools allow you to see saved color schemes that folks have built, or you can build your own. The tools are easy to use and let you build colors schemes based on the analogous, monochromatic, triad, compound, and shades rules.

osalt.com keeps tabs on the latest in open source software. I found their open source page for graphic software today and was glad to see a multitude of options out there. These programs would be great for beginning artists/designers that can’t shell out a grand or more for software licensing. Check it out here and make sure you select the “open source software” option from the list at the top right.

The Rastorbator is a great tool for taking your image and turning it into a giant poster, up to 20 meters! the program can be downloaded or you may opt to use the web based version. Either way, you can have an image large enough to cover your wall and the best part is, The Rasterbator breaks the image up into pages that you can print on your printer.

I never seem to have enough brushes for Photoshop and Design Reviver is adding to my collection with a set of paper brushes for Photoshop. Now I can just paint my paper texture down quickly with out having to run through some crazy 10 step process. The brush set includes 7 brushes to paint various paper textures, thanks guys!

No, thats not a typo above, though it does still work if you type it in your browser that way.  Whatis?com has a file extension list to assist us when we get an file from someone with say a .KIZ (digital postcard - kodak) file extension.  This list does fall a little short since it does not tell you where to find a program to read the file.  But, it does quickly tell me what the file format is and I guess I can Google for programs from there.  So there it is, not ground breaking but certainly useful.

So, if you are like me, you sold your $80 color theory book back to the book store for $10 so that you could get a brew. Well, unfortunate for you and me, that book was full of great information and might be useful to you now. Don’t go spend another 80 bones. Information like this is now on the internet. worqx.com is Janet Ford’s personal site and on it she has some color theory basics, including color wheel examples and some color picking basics. So, if you don’t find a great color scheme from the post that I did earlier, you can create your own.

Well, we all hit the wall ever so often and need a lift. Beautifully is a web design showcase site showing off some of the latest designs that are out there. Now I know these are technically web design sites, but there is no shortage of fine graphic design here. Most of the work is top notch and will hopefully get you inspired and back to work. Anyway, if you go there and don’t like it you can always click the back button.

Color is your friend, well most of the time. On occasion I find myself stuck trying to pick out colors or worse, regurgitating the same color schemes over and over again. Well, good thing there are sites like beta.dailycolorscheme.com. These guys go above and beyond by offering the colors scheme for download in many formats, displaying the color in code (hex, rgb, hsb), offering RSS feeds, social bookmarking and even color schemes in your email. WOW! Basically there is no excuse to not get your color schemes.

I am always looking for more fonts and I hate buying them, unless someone needs one in particular. Well, if like me you are sick of looking at your old font list and want to mix it up a bit, then you should check out 1001 Free Fonts.

The site is clean and has the fonts broken down alphabetically and some by description. The site is easy to use and lets me access loads of freeware fonts. Truly a great find!

Another cool one worth checkin out is da-font.com. This one is not as clean but has some funky fonts to download.