Design How-To: Using the Color Wheel to Find the Right Match

Your choice of color palette can change the intent and impact of an image. The folks at the design magazine "Before & After" show you how to find the perfect colors to complement your photos and create harmonious designs.
Written by John McWade on May 2, 2003

This story is taken from "Before & After" Magazine.

You pay attention to colors in your photographs. You may even use a color management system to ensure that the colors you see on screen are the same as the ones that print. Yet do you pay enough attention to the colors that surround the image? The colors you use in your design can lessen the impact or change the meaning of a photo.

It all goes back to the color wheels we used as kids to learn about color. Colors can coordinate, complement, or clash to different effect. Start by selecting tones from your image itself then experiment with the color wheel for endless options.

This article was available on CreativePro.com for a limited time only. However, you can still read the article by buying Issue 31 from the Before & After site. Since we're big fans of the magazine, we recommend you subscribe for a full 32 articles (that's four print issues for $42 or 32 downloadable PDFs for $24).

1

PDF can't be opened.

PDF can't be opened.

2

Very helpful - quickly gets to the point

This example should be of interest to anyone making color publishing decisions.

3

Great article

This is a great article, but how do you create those color wheels?! I'm a Photoshop user and this tool seems to be absent. Without the ability to create these color wheels it is difficult to implement the ideas in this article.

4

Awesome Advice

Really gave me some insight for pulling contrasting colors out of a photo!

Login

Login to post a comment. Not a member? Sign up here
Enter your CreativePro.com username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
Forgot your password?