color theory

Ramucho

hi everybody,

I'm starting to be really interested in color theory and I was wondering if any of you has tips (especially how to find complementary colors in photoshop and other stuff like that)
Thanks

Illusions

Well...for some fun, the flash is slow, but...whatever...you can go to www.Behr.com, and choose the "Color Smart" link under Explore Color. Its pretty interesting to play around with and see different color combinations. Other than that...

Complimentary colors are usually the colors opposite one another on the color wheel. You'll have to figure out what type of primary colors you wish to base this off of first. Red, Green, Blue are your standard additive primary colors your monitor uses. Red, Yellow, Blue (or Magenta, Yellow, Cyan) are your basic print primary colors. If you're going to use the additive color wheel, in photoshop to find a colors compliment, just use Invert.

Other than that...color theory is quite complex, and is better explained with a book, guide, or college course. You'll have to deal with things like warm, cool colors, split compliments, and a bunch of other color combinations that I've forgotten the names for, or exactly what they are.

Ryno

The most simple tip I can think of is to snag some really pretty pictures off of the internet, then to take a look at what colors are in them. Very quickly you'll start to figure out which colors go well together. You can even do a color picker on them, and get a good color palette going with them. Then paint away!

Eric Chadwick

Another fun complimentary-color mixer.
http://colormatch.dk/

malcolm

A very basic way to look at colour theory is have your direction light casting a colour and have your shadow colour be the exact opposite of that colour. Just invert the base colour in photoshop to get the complimentary colour.

Scott Ruggels

Oh, and for the curious, here are the notes I took during Ron Lemann & Jason Manley's color theory Lectures this past weekend at the San Francisco Work Shop.

http://www.rdwarf.com/edbado/LJPics/2005/massive_weekend/colortheory/colortheory01.gif

http://www.rdwarf.com/edbado/LJPics/2005/massive_weekend/colortheory/colortheory02.gif

http://www.rdwarf.com/edbado/LJPics/2005/massive_weekend/colortheory/colortheory03.gif

http://www.rdwarf.com/edbado/LJPics/2005/massive_weekend/colortheory/colortheory04.gif

They are a little scattered as they tag teamed, but I took as much as I could.

I also took photos, but haven't uploaded them yet.

Scott

Ramucho

Thanks for the cool tips guys they're very useful! By my side I found this tuts withe some basics and a color schemer tool (seems there are a lot of them )

http://steeldolphin.com/tutorials_theory.php

Illusions

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-schemes.html

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-wheel-types.html