Color can be as strong a brand identifier as a well-designed logo or catchy tagline. On the web, color can create an emotional response and should play a significant role in your website design. Well-placed and well-selected colors cannot only identify your call to action but can function as a catalyst for action.

While there are many color tools available for website design, the following are some of the best creative color tools for marketers to use to improve their website designs.

Frank DeLoupe Hex Color Capture

Frank DeLoupe lives in your menu bar. It can grab and copy any color from any pixel on your screen. You can open it using any user specified a hotkey, choose your color and it provides CSS ready RGBA or HEX values. It can also produce a variety of other color codes so you can quickly put any color you choose to use. 

Frank DeLoupe also works seamlessly with Photoshop CS5 and above. You can establish a connection remotely with photoshop so that any color Frank picks up can be automatically used as Photoshop’s foreground color. Designers and developers love this app as it’s a great timesaver.

ColourLovers Graphic Design Tools

COLOURlovers is an international creative community that helps people to discover their inner designer. 

COLOURLovers provides members with tons of user created color content and shared inspiration. Its tools make the creative process extremely easy and painless. Whether you’re looking to create a color palette for your next project or compose a piece of vector art, COLOURLovers can make the job easier.

COLOURLovers tools can take you from design inspiration to execution quickly and efficiently.

There are currently 4,009,840 COLOURLovers around the world who have created    6,976,405 Colors, 3,036,333 Palettes and 3,872,978 Patterns.

0to255 Graphic Design Tools

This is the easiest tool to use listed here. That doesn’t mean that 0to255 is any less effectual! If you typically spend hours manually finding lighter or darker shades of a color for your design projects give 0to255 a try. It allows you to find colors in the same color spectrum within seconds. It’s the optimal tool for finding perfect hover, border or gradient colors.

First pick your color and enter its hex value. 0to255 then presents you with a range of colors from your color through to black and white optimized for web design. When you find a shade you like, click on it, and the hex code is automatically copied to your clipboard.

Pictaliscious Graphic Design Tools

Built by the team at MailChimp, Pictaculous is a versatile color palette tool. It works by generating a dedicated color palette from any uploaded image. It starts by creating a primary palette of five colors directly from the colors extracted from your image. It then pulls in color suggestions from both Adobe Kuler and ColorLovers so you can quickly compare and check various color combinations.

One great feature of Pictaculous is that you can take a picture with your mobile, email it and Pictaculous will generate a matching color palette including hex codes. These are a great feature to incorporate if you spot some inspiration during your travels and want to quickly create a color palette from your photos.

All palettes can be saved and downloaded as Photoshop Swatch Files or just copy the generated hex codes.

These creative tools will help you to maximize your use of color in your website design. Experimenting with color can help you to optimize your website to function more efficiently as a lead generator. Give these tools a try and take your website design to a new level!

About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.