Lesson 1: Choosing a Color palette

Creating a theme and color palette:

You’re probably thinking, “I’ve read the intro, now what?” Here is where the creativity comes in to play!

First things first, decide on a theme! For me my themes can come from something random I think up, some supplies that I saw or something as simple as a suggestion.

Some people use sites like http://www.colourlovers.com/ to find a palette. Some use supplies or a picture as an inspiration.

For my example I’m going to use one of the CU ok tubes I have from Lisa @ sophisticated imaging. This is a freebie one btw. You can find it HERE 

And PSP 10

I pull up the preview in my PSP. I increase the size to it’s full 100 percent, so I can grab the colors as I like. I also figure out which one in the preview I want to use. I like bright colors so I am going for the bright colored one.

I open a new canvas, sized 500x500, transparent and a raster layer. Yup this is big, but remember we are cropping it down.

I move it so it’s side by side with my preview. This way I can work easily.

Now I make my preset tool active, and use the rectangle tool. BTW I just leave it at the default settings for everything.

I move my cursor to the color palette box to the right. I close off the top box. Then I click on the bottom one to pull up the materials palette. Using my cursor, I hover over the spot where I want to “pick up” one of the colors. As you can see from the preview, I’m picking up a pink color. I click ok and now I can draw out my rectangle. I draw out a pretty large rectangle. I do this to give myself enough space. Don’t forget to convert it to a raster layer. This way you are getting each rectangle on it’s own layer and you can move them as you need to.

I continue this process until I get the desired colors I want. I suggest doing at least 4 colors. You can use black and/or white as your main colors or accent colors. It’s all about your creativity!

Finally use your crop tool, and move the cropping rectangle to where you like it. Then right click and hit apply! Now you have your color palette. Save it and you’ve got your palette.

Lesson Created by Shani aka Wicked Princess Scraps 2011-2012