If you're like me you may have started a Pinterest board with photos of color schemes that you love - colors that make your heart sing and you would love to add to your next design project. Here's an easy way to translate the colors from any photo into a color swatch file that you can bring into Photoshop and use for design work.
I love these bright pastel colors from an image I found on Pinterest. These colors really say summer is here. Now to turn this photo into a color palette.
Download the image and open it in Photoshop.
Choose File then Save for Web and Devices.
Once the Save dialogue opens choose the option to save it as a GIF or PNG-8 file. This will generate a Color Table. You can choose up to 256 colors if you like. Click on the down arrow next to the Color Table to open the Color Palette Menu.
You're almost done! Check Sort By Hue from the drop down list - it makes more sense to me to put similar colors close together on your color palette. Then click on Save Color Table. This will create a color swatch file with a .ACT extension. I save my swatch file in a color schemes folder along with the inspiration photos.
To load your new color palette go to the Swatch panel - it is usually found with the Color and Styles panels. Select the Swatch menu bv clicking on the down arrow. Choose to Load Swatches or Replace Swatches and navigate to the folder where you placed the swatch you just saved. Select the .ACT file and it will load. Tah Dah! You are ready to design :-)
Thank you to StarSunFlowerStudio's blog where I learned all about this. Be sure to check out her post for more step-by-step directions.
