Palette Selection

[Humabout]

Something that has always eluded me is how people choose their palettes. I never really got into the whole color-art thing much, usually doing pencil or charcoal sketches, and now I find that my colors usually clash, while other people seem to get these awesome moody blends that breathe life into their work. Please share your wisdom!

[johnvanvliet]

and now I find that my colors usually clash

practice, practice, practice, practice,

[ChickPea]

^^^ What johnvanvliet said!

One thing you could try is to find a photo with tones that you like, perhaps a nature scene or a flower or something like that. Apply a large blur on it, maybe 500px? Basically blur it until all focus is completely gone and you just have colours merging into each other. Then use the colour picker tool to create a palette from there. You can also mess about with saturation/contrast levels if the colours are too bright.

You could also have a browse through ColourLovers.com for inspiration. Many of the palettes might be too colourful, but again you can mess with the levels/saturation.

[J.Edward]

Hey Humabout - best thing i can suggest is to look at and learn from color choices made in work that you like.
The best way to learn is by doing, so do sample pieces and try color combos based on those that you know you like.
As you do more it will begin to come more naturally to you.

And johnvanvliet is correct - practice. It's the corner stone.

edit - ChickPea the ninja... got in just ahead there.

[Azélor]

The color making a good palette often look bland taken separately.

[whipstache]

I found in some of my non-cartographical design work that you can really make a color palette blend well together if you overlay a color.

EXAMPLE: Here I've taken a random sampling of four map-type colors. The first four are the colors that were chosen.
The following three I've simply laid an orange rectangle at 25% opacity over the palette, and changed the layer blend mode.
Palette 2 is Normal blend mode
Palette 3 is Overlay
Palette 4 is Hard Light



You can see how each of the three palettes with the colored rectangle (even though you can't see the rectangle on the third and fourth palette) are much more cohesive, even if the effect is subtle. In the normal blend mode, the first box stands out a bit more. In the hard light blend mode, the green box on the right feels more in tune with the others.

Obviously, had I taken a more blue rectangle, it would have cooled off the palette. Had I taken a gray, it would have made the palette feel a bit more old. Combine that with the ability to try out all the different blend modes and opacities, and you can really tweak yourself into a really well married color palette.

Hope this helps.

[ChickPea]

That's a good tip, Whipstache.

[Humabout]

Thanks for all your responses. I'm looking at as many maps and paintings and pictures as I can to see what sorts of colors I like. And that's a cool tip, Whipstache. Is that something you use at the end of the mapmaking process to unify the entire thing or do you do it up front to get the colors you will use before you really start the project?

[whipstache]

I do this up front, in picking my colors for the map. One of the great things about working digitally is you can change colors, subtly or drastically, even after the map is completed. And, I often do color tweaks after the fact. But by doing this up front, I know that the colors will at least have some semblance of cohesion.

I usually keep a palette document open so that I can simply go eyedropper the color I need.

[Humabout]

Cool beans! I've gathered a bunch of colors I like and will use your trick on them now.
You make a palette file? Why not save a palette in GIMP or, assuming its possible, in Photoshop? I usually pass any graphics I make through GIMP at some point to add color to them unless I'm banging out a 5-min quicky in Inkscape. Maybe I shouldn't do that either?