When it comes to colors, a lot of people struggle, and that includes myself.
So to help me, and obviously to help you, today I want to show you my favorite tool
that helps me when it comes to picking up colors. It's called Coolorus.
And I will give you a little demonstration of it, and even a little bit later, tell you how you can
get it for free. So this is the Coolorus. It's that little wheel that you see.
And it's a plug-in to replace the color picker of Photoshop, which is this one, that
you already--that you always have to double click to make it appear.
And just like that, it's already in place. The Coolorus will stay in place in front of
your computer when you're drawing at all times, seeing the colors all the time.
It's going to be easier for you to pick up the colors. In comparison, you can see
that they almost have all the same features, except that the Coolorus
has a lot more features. But you have the color wheel which is all around it here,
and you have the color slider which we have here, and the color picker here.
And you can put it to either the triangle or the square depending on your preferences.
Now when it starts to change, its these features that you have here.
So you obviously have the foreground and background color,
which is foreground here and the background here. And what you have beside this, all the
color harmonies which right now is on the monochromatic, which means only one color.
Then next I'm going to pick up on the complementary scheme, now I have the two.
And they will follow in front of each other, telling me exactly what's the
complimentary of the color that I am picking. And for those who struggle with color,
that will help you a lot. And you have the complementary as much as the triadic
and analogous, and a few of them like this. So you'll be able to play with the
colors and know exactly the results that you want to have with those color harmonies.
So just for that, it's already a big plus.
Also you'll be able to customize the wheel by just clicking on it and pressing on the minus.
You can see that it's going to get in smaller chunks, depending on what you want.
And all the color sliders will have the same thing. If you have to click on it
and simply press the minus, it will get in a smaller chunk or bigger chunk,
depending on what. You want to simply have to press the plus, or in my case the
shift+plus, and it will go back to the smooth color wheel as you can see right now.
Also the Coolorus will give you a little bit of the color slider, although a bit
different. So we have the RGB, the HSV, which is mostly the one that painters will
prefer. I for sure, it's the one I prefer. You have all the colors, and you can play
with the saturation and the value of that color at the same time. But you also
have the Lab, the CMYK, and the grayscale obviously. You will also have the mixer,
and if I click on the mixer, then you would have a few of them. You have the scheme,
blenders, shades & tones, the color history, and the swatches. And if you click on the
little icons at the bottom, you'll be able to make them appear or disappear.
As much as by clicking and dragging be able to make them switch.
Now the scheme is really really cool, because depending on the color harmony that you have,
let's say I'm on complementary here, and I press on the auto-sample here, I'll be able to switch and
then it's going to give me a blending between the two of them. And the blender
will give me a blender between the foreground and the background color.
So I'll be able to actually pick up some colors that are from the scheme.
And obviously the blender will change depending on the color that I have in
front of them here from the background and the foreground color.
Then you have the shade & tone will give you this color that you have. Each time that I pick a
color, it's going to give me the shade that I can have from really high to really low in terms of value.
And the color history, which will give me each color that I'm
picking out all the time, and give me a history of it. And finally the swatches,
which I can just simply take a swatch and drag it,
to have it there, and therefore be able to make myself a selection of swatches that I like.
You will also have, for people that like to use text,
I'm thinking maybe people who like to put text into their illustration, or just graphic
designers or even web designers. So by clicking just text,
usually you have to change the color here, change the color there, and then
--alright, I'm gonna put some text. Well with the Coolorus, if you go into settings and if
you put just the effect, shape, and text, then you will have something you have to
go on your layer, and not even to double click on it, and usually have it selected.
At this time you simply have to be on the layer by clicking on the layer.
And then I can simply have to change the color and Coolorus will give me the color
that I'm picking each time on my text. So that can be a really cool feature for people who actually use text.
And that feature will also work if you're using shapes.
So if I'm making a shape here, and I just decide to change it, it will do the same thing.
I just have to be on the layer, I don't have to double click on it,
and then to change it, I can simply now change it by moving my Coolorus.
So you can save a lot of time by doing this as well.
Now my favorite tool that Coolorus gives is actually the gamut mask, that you have right here.
And by clicking on the gamut mask, it's going to give you a selection of different masks that you can have: from triangle, square, round,
--I have a few of them. And they're all fully customizable.
So I can click here on the Edit mask, and I'll be able therefore to
move each of the points. Let's say we'll have something that's towards the gray in the middle,
with the red, and purple blue, and then something a little bit more
saturated for the yellow here. And then I'll be able to actually move it if I
want to, as much as rotate it, to define the gamut mask that I want.
And then just simply click OK. And the gamut mask basically is a mask that you put over
the color wheel, and then you can simply have a smaller selection of the colors,
making sure that you don't get lost, and create pizzas as well when you're painting,
by having a more refined, more small, palette of color to create the illustration.
That can be really really practical. And that's in a nutshell, how Coolorus works.
Now for those of you who want to have the plugin for free, I'll put a link below.
Coolorus gives you a 14-day trial to actually try their color wheel,
but I'm sure that after 14 days, if you try it, you will want to keep it.
So if you want it at 40% off, which will make it 10 USD instead of 14,
you can actually a get a link from the Academy. As well as many videos where I actually show you
how to use the color harmony, as much as videos on how the color gamut mask works.
So if you're interested in that as well, I'll put a link below.
You simply have to click on the link for the Digital Painting Academy.
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