Adobe Kuler is a free online application developed by Adobe. It basically lets you create your own color schemes or download the color schemes created by massive Adobe online community.

To begin, all you need is a free Adobe account. Go to Adobe Kuler and click on Register link on the top right side of the screen.

Once you’re logged in you can create and download your favorite color schemes. We’ll split this short introduction to Adobe Kuler into three parts.

1. How to Create your Own Color Theme.
2. Download Color Themes created by Adobe Online Community.
3. Final Thoughts

How to Create Your Own Color Theme in Adobe Kuler

To create your own color themes, click create.

Now you will be presented with a color wheel and some options or rules on the left. Select your Base color and move the sliders inside color wheel to select the color of your choice. Depending on your rule settings Adobe Kuler will come up with some really amazing colors.

At the bottom of the page you will find the current colors in the theme along with HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB, and Hex values that you can edit or copy by clicking inside the box. You can also use the sliders just below the color to tweak the color.

We won’t go into the details of the Select a Rule menu because it’s pretty much self explanatory. Just hover your mouse over the rule it will display it’s function as shown in the image below.

On the Top right side of the page you will find Title and Tags Box. Basically it lets you add title and tags for your theme and either you want to make your theme public or private. Click Save and your theme will be saved either as public or private depending on your choice.

You can also use images to automatically create color themes. Click on “From and Image” as shown in the image below.

By default, it will display a flower image but you can either Upload your own image or click on Flickr and it will fetch images from Flickr. It’s probably one of the easiest way to come up with some really amazing color themes.

Basically It’s all about tweaking and playing with different options and values.

Download Color Themes created by Adobe Online Community

Click on Themes and you will find thousands of free color themes available for download. You can search for themes, view the most popular themes, newest themes and highest rated themes.

Downloading a theme is pretty simple and all you have to do is to click on the theme of your choice and click on the little icon to download the theme as Adobe Swatch file as shown in the image below. You can then import that .ASE file in your favorite Adobe application.

You can also click on the little icon with sliders and it will display the HSV, RGB  and Hex Values that you can use for web development.

Final Thoughts

Adobe Kuler is a great product from Adobe and it really simplifies the tedious task of choosing colors for your design or web projects. If you have the Adobe CS4 suite then it’s even more simple to import color themes right into your favorite Adobe application. Adobe also provides an Adobe Air application for Kuler that makes it even more simple to download and import color themes.