kuler: Color palettes for the masses

Adobe is offering a relatively new color tool for free, called kuler. It lets you put together color palettes using the usual color theory, with tools like RGB sliders for adjusting parts of each palette. If you have (or create) and Adobe I.D., you can save and publish your palettes. Each color in the palette is listed in HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB and HEX (web), so you can use it in just about any program imaginable. You can’t drag and drop colors the way you can with a program like Color Schemer Studio, but it’s a really cool tool. It’s built with Adobe’s own Flash of course, and this is one of the great uses for Flash.

You can download your palettes as Adobe Swatch Exchange files, which opens up a few possibilities for exporting into various programs, as long as they’re Adobe programs ;=). I had a few problems with the interface locking up when I switched away from it and came back. I’m not certain if that’s a Flash problem or something particular to kuler.