Working with Color

There is no such thing as a good color -- there are only good color relationships. Here's how to start with a palette of colors that aren't harmonious and make them work together.
Written by Bruce Heavin on June 27, 2007

These video tutorials are from lynda.com's " Working with Color" video training series.

Maybe a client saddled you with a palette of colors you hate. Or perhaps you want to understand the theory behind things such as Illustrator CS3's Live Color and Adobe's kuler. No matter your motivation, this video tutorial will help you understand how changing colors' value, hue, and saturation can unite seemingly incompatible colors (Figure 1) into a harmonious set.

Figure 1. Can this color palette be saved?

Illustrator and animator Bruce Heavin demonstrates the effects of different color strategies:
Shift hues -- Move hues on the color wheel
Shift color -- Add value + saturation +hue
Shift saturation -- Take away and adding saturation
Tint colors -- Add white
Shade colors -- Add black
Tone colors -- Mix grey (tinting + shading)

This video is a QuickTime movie. You can download it by option- or right-clicking on the link below and saving the ".mov" file to your hard disk. Or you can simply click the following link to play it:

Color Relationships

Excerpted from "Working with Color" © lynda.com. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

1

Explanations Not Good

Not much useful information here. The presenter at one point declares that he has "...chosen the ugliest colors possible..." and in the same breath says "...in fact, they're random." So which is it? He clicks through variations of this group of colors, at times saying things like 'that works really well' without any explanation of why he has that opinion. Maybe this is useful as part of a larger presentation, but I'm not convinced.

2

something wrong

this is what I got when I clicked on the link:
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