Making Color Palettes from Photos

In my French Cottages in Living Colours and several other posts featuring objects or houses, I've made color swatches or palettes inspired from my photos.  They are handy for future projects you could paint or create for a craft.  You can use a...

Photoshop/Illustrator type of software program but they're complicated for everyday use.  While functional for the more technical graphics works and designing, you really don't need them to do simple work.   Like so many photo apps I've used (see my previous TIPS posts), there are free color palette apps if you work on an iPad or iPhone.  These not meant for a desktop computer, however.  

When I used a PC, I found the free software program, Microsoft Picture It!, would allow me to develop collages and extra art work in the same program.  It was especially meant for easy projects like the one above where you can crop, re-color, merge photos, etc..  I could make a palette no problem.  However, the Picture It! software isn''t compatible with the Mac I now use, thus I began exploring other options for simple color/graphic/photo design work. 

 I used the fleur de lis shape for these colors.

It took a long time, but finally I must have googled the right words like, "how to create a color palette from a photo" (yes indeed) and found Pic Monkey.  Thank you, Mother Huddle blog, for turning me on to this cheap and fast way to make my color collages now!  Pic Monkey can do a hundred other things also for free, but I especially was interested in the color work.  

In order to achieve the look above, I did as Mother Huddle and started experimenting with a "collage" format.  Click on "collage" and put a photo into one of the spaces.  Leave the other spaces open for dropping in the colors.  You can resize the empty spaces by grabbing the edges and dragging.  Save this to your pictures and close out.  Then select the "edit a photo" and open your recently saved collage.  Begin adding shapes with the shapes tool and then colors to match using the color dropper.  Then re-save the final picture when complete.  Finding the color dropper tool was a bit tricky so I did read the Mother Huddle blog's directions for this step which really works.  See my other tips in POST TIPS.

Using the photo of the plate I bought in Lake Como, I made this color palette with the cool app, Irodori