Useful Sites of the Week

I've had my web designer hat on lately. I've always been a much better judge of good design than a creator of good design, so I need all the help I can get. One thing that can make a huge difference in the quality of your site is color selection. Here are some sites I've been going to lately for chromatic inspiration.

The Return of Design - Web Color Schemes
A slew of pre-packaged palettes, all using web-safe colors (i.e. 256-color palette), each with a number of variations.

ColorBlender
Pick your starting color and ColorBlender will show you a 6-color palette for that color, and allow you to easily play with variations or customize them. You can also save them [to a cookie] so you have your personal blends available to you whenever you visit the site. You can also email direct links to your blend. Very cool.

Color Scheme Generator 2
The ultimate color-generating tool. If you can't come up with a color scheme you like with this tool, you really are a lost cause. You can even see how your scheme looks to people with any one of eight different types of colorblindness.