When I build new sites I spend a good bit of time determining what my color schemes should be. There is a certain psychological aspect that needs to be considered and is often overlooked that can be the difference to attracting visitors and keeping them on your site.
There are many decisions to make as you start to put the site together. Here are a few tools to help in the process of color picking and photo creation.
One of the best tools to help you determine the hexidecimal code for colors is the free colorpic tool. When I first discovered this tool, I could not believe it was free. You can get it here.
http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/
Here is another free tool. This is the best photo enhancing software I have ever used and it is free. I use it to create images and headers. In fact the image above was created with this software. I took the picture with my simple handheld camera, Canon PowerShot SD890IS, which is displayed in the right hand column of the blog. This little camera is all you need, takes great pictures and video. It has a lot of flexibility in the settings to produce a variety of lighting changes. It fits in your pocket and in a short amount of time you can have a vast library of images and video at your disposal, that you own. Incredible.
http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php
As you start to plan your site there are some major components you will need to make decisions on before you get too far into the building process.
Here is a short list, you can add to it but this will get you thinking about some of the decisions you need to make.
1. The background color
2. Color and Graphic of your Header – also the size
3. Headlines
4. Sub-Headlines
5. Font – Color, Size, Type
Here is a list of colors and some of the emotions and feelings they can bring about. Remember to utilize contrast to help emphasize the impact of the colors you choose.
RED is associated with love, passion, danger, warning, excitement, food, impulse, action, adventure.
BLUE is associated with trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism.
GREEN is associated with money, nature, animals, health, healing, life, harmony.
ORANGE is associated with comfort, creativity, celebration, fun, youth, affordability.
PURPLE is associated with royalty, justice, ambiguity, uncertainty, luxury, fantasy, dreams.
WHITE is associated with innocence, purity, cleanliness, simplicity.
YELLOW is associated with curiosity, playfulness, cheerfulness, amusement.
PINK is associated with softness, sweetness, innocence, youthfulness, tenderness.
BROWN is associated with earth, nature, tribal, primitive, simplicity.
GREY is associated with neutrality, indifference, reserved.
BLACK is associated with seriousness, darkness, mystery, secrecy.
Use these as a guideline to help target your site to your intended niche.
Blues and white backgrounds work best for business sites. Maternity sites should consider some pink. Golf or lawn sites sites should consider green. Food sites should consider red, etc.
Here are some Great Sites with some really cool tools to show you some color combo trends and help determine your color combos. Enjoy the process.
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Great Post! Great Info!