Web designers often have a very good feeling for colors and don’t need a tool which supports choosing good color combinations. Color Schemes Generator 2 goes one step further and not only generates nice color schemes but also offers the possibilty to view the generated schemes as colorblind people may see them.
The color schemes are generated from a base color, which has to be set on the color wheel, and a chosen scheme. Five different schemes are offered to choose from:
- Mono, based on one color tint,
- Contrast, adding the complement,
- Triad, with two additional colors,
- Tetrad, based on four colors and
- Analogic, with two adjacent colors.
The angle/distance for the Triad, Tetrad and Analogic color schemes can be individually adjusted with the help of a small slider.
On a first glance the tool looks simple and easy but this main functionality is only the tip of the iceberg. You can use RGB values, circle through different saturations, adjust each color individually, reduce a scheme to web colors, choose between six different variations and even save a direct link to the generated scheme.
To me the feature of Color Schemes Generator 2 which sticks out most is the possibility of viewing a color scheme as a colorblind sees it. You can select one out of nine different types to adjust the view on the scheme: Normal Vision, Protanopy, Deuteranopy, Tritanopy, Protanomly, Deuteranomaly, Tritanomaly, Full Colorblindness and Atypical Achromatism.
If you are colorblind this is not so much of help.
For all others it gives some impressions about how colors are experienced by colorblind people. This helps a lot in choosing good color schemes and by good I mean schemes which can be seen and distinguished by colorblind people as well. One step forward towards better web accessibility.
But apart from all the good there is also a downside:
All the different possibilities of adjustments make it almost impossible to find a good color combination. If you are colorblind you have to rely on tools and you can not rely on your eyes. Too many buttons and sliders are distracting and don’t support the goal to generate a great color scheme automatically.
By the way this nice tool can even be used offline. It is based on CSS/Javascript and a downloadable zip-file is offered for easy installation.
Related articles:
Web Site Accessibility
Choosing the Right Colors
Simulating Color Blind Vision
Direct link to Color Schemes Generator 2.
I want to say “Thanks!” for this wonderful and useful site. It is not only helpful, but increases understanding and consideration among those, like me, who were unfamiliar with the real world details of color blindnesses.