It’s probably old hat to anyone doing design for a living, but I found a couple of new color tools for OS X that are making my web design work easier.

I use TextMate for coding, and wasn’t thinking about the CSS bundle item that brings up OS X’s default color picker (Command-Shift-C; the TextMate bundle automatically copies in the color using hex notation), I was pleased by a tip from macosxhints.com showing how to write a one-line Applescript app that shows the color picker.

1. Open “AppleScript Editor.app” (in the Applications folder)
2. Enter the following:choose color
3. Save it. Change the file format to “Application” in the save dialog.

I added an icon I grabbed from iconfactory.com. (Download the icon set you want to use. Right-click on the new application, and pick “Get Info”, and drag-and-drop your desired icon over the application’s icon.)

Even more turbo-charging the Color Picker

I also found two free plug-ins for the color picker. The first was “Hex Color Picker” from Waffle Software, which outputs the hex version of a color suitable for CSS (although I’m using the RGB values more and more). The second was a plugin called Mondrianum which utilizes Adobe’s Kuler palette service. To top it off, I learned you can create your own palettes in the color picker (it’s the third tab).

Awesomeness all around.

Posted in Computers, Design