How do I create a Photoshop colour theme?
In today’s post we show you how creating a theme from a photograph and installing it as swatches in Adobe Photoshop is much easier than you thought!
For this tutorial, we will be using Adobe’s Color utility, mainly because it can be easily synced with creative cloud, and therefore, all of your adobe applications. Editor’s note: you will need an Adobe account to complete this tutorial, which is free at Adobe
To get the most from this tutorial, we suggest investigating more online resources to help you easily create your own palettes in our article, 8 of the best colour palette resources on the web
Creating a theme
1. Go to adobe’s colour theme generator at color.adobe.com. If you already have an Adobe ID, that’s great. If not, you can always create a free one to make and save creations.
Adobe online colour theme generator
2. Choose your image by clicking the ‘Create from image’ icon. Navigate to your desired image file and upload.
Click the ‘create from image’ icon
Navigate to your desired image
3. When your picture loads in, Color will choose a default colour set from one of its Color Mood settings which, as you can see, can be very different from each other for just one photograph.
4. As none of the colour choices have really grabbed me, I’ve moved some picked colour points around to achieve a different theme. This is easy to do, just grab one from the picture, and put it where you want it. The colour is live and will change when you move it, so you can see how it fits.
I’ve picked out a custom theme mainly from the shop signage
Close-up on the shop sign
5. All you need to do before we get it into Photoshop is save your colours.
Hit the ‘Save’ button
There are options available when you save your theme
6. If, after you save, you find that you want to change anything, you can click the ‘edit copy’.
If you aren’t happy, you can edit the theme
7. On the edit screen, you can change everything about the theme and re-save it when you’re happy.
Edit options are aplenty
8. As you can see, when you click on a single colour, there are multiple colour breakdowns which are changeable using whatever colour mode you are working to. Once you’re done the theme will be saved for import when you open Photoshop.
CMYK values
RGB values
To install the swatch in Adobe Photoshop
9. Moving onto Adobe Photoshop. Open the theme palette Select Window > Extensions > Adobe Color Themes.
Open the correct palette in Photoshop
10. Your save will appear in the theme palette and is editable without having to leave Photoshop. You can also view it again online.
Edit your theme while still in Photoshop
11. What we really want to do is use it, so under the dropdown menu select ‘add to swatches, and each individual colour will appear in your swatch palette (which you can open by going to Window > Extensions).
All your theme colours appear in the swatch palette
For further inspiration on creating your own colour palettes, check out 17 beautiful colour palettes from pictures
Editor’s Note:
Make sure you are logged in to your Adobe account when you try to open the Adobe Color Theme palette or your themes won’t appear.
