There have been a few times over the past several months where I’ve seen, how you say, unfortunate color selections in use in church media systems. For a designer like myself it’s one of the most basic concepts — you have to know what colors play well together. But I have to remind myself that not everyone sitting behind the media computer in a church is a full-time creative or even a part-time graphic designer. In fact, the odds are very, very good that they’re not, especially in smaller churches.
So is there no hope, then? Are we doomed to red type on a blue background, permanently destroying our retinas and possibly causing birth defects in the unborn? Nay. We are not without hope.
While there are tons of great tools out there to help with this, the most efficient and easy to use is a free online resource called Kuler from Adobe. Kuler is a web-hosted application for generating color themes. It allows you to quickly create color variations and, more importantly, search for color themes based on a keyword.
Getting Started
First, you’ll want to have an Adobe ID account. If you don’t have one, click here to register. It’s free, and not only will it give you access to Kuler, but you’ll also be able to download all the software trials, resources, and free beta software (if you’re into that kind of thing) that Adobe puts out.
Once you’ve registered, browse to the Kuler site: http://kuler.adobe.com. In the upper right hand corner, click “Sign In” and enter your Adobe ID username and password. (Note: You don’t have to sign in to play around with Kuler, or even to search for color themes. Signing in, however, allows you access to special features such as saving the color swatches for use in other Adobe programs like Photoshop, and Illustrator, creating themes, and bookmarking favorites.)
Learning Your Way Around
When you first sign in, you’ll see the Kuler Newest Themes screen. The color bars across the top are the five colors that are part of the newest theme at the point you logged in. Then below that, from left to right, you’ll see the search and navigation area, the themes feed (multiple themes stacked), the details of the selected theme, and a column with News & Features from Adobe.
Probably the best way to learn your way around anything is to poke around and click things and see what they do. I know that sounds like the easy way out for a tutorial (“Oh, just poke around? I couldn’t have figure THAT out on my own. Thanks, Wes.”) but with a tool like Kuler, it really is meant to be best used by exploration.
Searching for & Using Themes
The beauty of Kuler for non-designers is the ability to search for a color theme based on a keyword. As users create themes within Kuler, they’re able to apply various “tags” to describe the color palette. So if you search with the term “sunrise” you’ll get the following:
This is great because it takes the guesswork out of color selection. If you’re not really searching for a keyword, but just need to find a cool color theme, you might want to click on the “Most Popular” selection in the navigation menu. You’ll be presented with page after page of beautiful themes. All we need now is to get the colors from the Kuler website into our design.
Download the Theme .ASE File
If you are using Photoshop, the easiest way to get Kuler themes into the program is to just use the extension that shipped with Photoshop CS4 & CS5 by going to Window > Extensions > Kuler. You’ll get a nifty little app where you can browse themes, search by keyword, modify existing themes, and event create your own.
If that’s not an option for whatever reason, everything from CS2 forward supports Adobe Swatch Exchange, or ASE files. You can download the file by clicking on the download icon in the theme’s detail area.
You’ll be prompted to save the file to your computer. For the sake of this tutorial, I’ll assume you’re using Photoshop, although the process is very similar across all Adobe software.
Open the swatches palette in Photoshop and in the upper right hand corner you’ll see a little arrow with lines beside it. Click that button, and you’ll be presented with a ton of options for your color swatches. Choose “Load Swatches…” and then browse to the location where you’ve saved your .ASE file. Your theme will be added as individual swatches in your color palette.
For the record, you can load ASE files in other graphics software, such as Gimp, but it may require a plugin or a little noodling. By the way — if your church isn’t able to purchase Photoshop, you should really give Photoshop Elements 9 a look. It’s $80, max, online and cheap enough that you should be able to purchase it and donate it to your church if they really don’t have the dough.
The Hard(er) Way — Color Values
If your program doesn’t accept .ASE files, or you just don’t want to mess with them you can always use the RGB (or CMYK, or HEX) values provided from Kuler. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay. RGB is an acronym for Red, Green, and Blue. So the RGB numbers represent the amount of each of those primary colors that it takes to make the exact color you’re looking at. You know what? It’s all a bit more complicated than I can really explain here. How’s about you check out this Wiki entry if you really care.
In order to use this, you’ll click on the slider icon in the detail view of the color, where you’ll be taken to a screen that will provide you with the numeric color values for each color in your theme. You can copy and paste them into the color picker for whatever graphics program you’re using. Even MS Paint allows you to create color this way (please don’t use MS Paint).
Now What?
Now that you’ve got the colors from Kuler into your program, your options are now kind of limitless. If you’re using a photo for your background, you can use Kuler to find a complimentary, high contrast color (other than white or black) to help complete the design. Or maybe you’re not using a photo and need some ideas for the background & text colors. Maybe you’re trying to figure out what to do with some basic graphic elements. Explore and experiment. There’s no quick path to good design.
Wrapping Up
This was either very helpful, or you’re under your desk crying, “I thought you were going to help. Make it stop.” Color issues can be intimidating, but once you get the hang of this very easy tool, you’ll have no problem hanging with the big boys and you’ll be creating color coordinating designs that could hang in the Smithsonian in no time. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find it easier to dress yourself when it’s all said and done.
What’s the most intimidating part of church media design to you? Let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you out.
