Color management REDUX!

Color management REDUX!: Wow, long time since the last blog update. We have done a lot behind the scenes like moved imm.io to amazon to handle the 5 million+ image views a day, updated grabber for firefox 4 and we also released the color balance adjustment and then some.

But that's not why I'm typing today .. I just released a new color selector that I would like to talk a bit about. We have not updated the color tool since the first release 2,5 years ago so it's about time.

The idea behind the new color tool is to simplify color management so everyone can understand the works behind blending color but still have the power to be precise. The dialog now have four different tabs, let me walk you though them.

1. Hue, saturation and lightness (HSL)
This is a new refined layout of the old way to select color, you define the base of the color, the "Hue" with the 360° color wheel. The middle map is partly the amount of color, the saturation and partly the lightness of the color.

2. Red, green, blue (RGB)
I know you all remember drawing classes you had as a child, you know when the teacher learned you about the blending of colors to produce new ones and you all started to blend all paint which always ended up as grey smudge ..

Well the rgb tab simulates just that blending which helps most of us understand the working of colors and blending on the screen.

3. Web colors (WEB)
Back in the days when I started as a web designer it was very important to keep to the defined web colors to ensure that your design would look as good as possible on all types of monitors.

4. Image colors (IMG)
The last tab give you access to the most common colors in the image you are working on. This is really good if you want to add background gradients or text that fit into the overall color style of the picture.

The outputs has also gone though some changes, now you will get some alternatives on the selected color, just click the color you like to work with that.


This is just the first release of the color selector and we are working on adding swatches and color history to the workflow as well, but we wanted to get this out and see what you think of it.

Over and out!
Ola