How to create a color scheme from nature.

Posted January 17th, 2008


  

Nature's creative color scheme

Want to get the absolute best color scheme from the best creative professional, guaranteed? I’m talking about the ultimate creative color palette?

Well, look no further than outside your window. Because really, there is no better creative professional than nature.

Think about it: whether it’s shapes, texture, contrast, lines, or some other aspect of design, nature knows best. No matter where you look, there is always something in nature that looks absolutely great. So is it any surprise that the best artists and designers find their inspiration from nature? Of course not. But what a lot of creative professionals don’t realize - and what you may not know - is that nature’s creativity can be captured for your own creative needs with a minimal amount of effort.

One way you can use nature’s beauty in your art or design work is through colors; using nothing more than your favorite image editing software and a photograph.

Simply find a photograph that you really like - or grab one from Flickr - and then open up Adobe Photoshop or some other type of image editing software. Once you have your image open in an editing program, you need to pixelate the image to bring out the definitave colors and create a color scheme. If you are using Photoshop, make sure that your photograph is on an active layer and then select Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic.

Photoshop mosaic filter

You’ll want to set the size of your mosaic cells fairly high, in order to get the strongest colors from the photograph for your color scheme; depending on the size of your photograph, setting your cell size between 60 and 100 is typically good.

Once your photograph has been pixelated you can pick any color out of the squares in front of you and viola, instant color scheme from nature. The best you will ever get, guaranted.

If you don’t have photo editing software available to you, there are some online tools available to pixelize photographs and create color schemes instantly; my personal favorite is the color palette generator by DeGraeve.com. It’s simple to use and will give you color codes for your website or other design project.

So there you have it, a perfect color scheme from the best in creativity, nature.

Original photograph by Loko_de_atar.