How to Make Color Palettes Using Photoshop Tutorial

Have you ever wanted to create a color palette from a photo? Color palettes are the main patterns of colors of a photograph. You can use color palettes to help you decide color themes in art projects. I already showed how to make a color palette offline in this tutorial. This tutorial shows you how to make color palettes on the computer. There are always websites that automatically do it for you such as Degraeve (which also gives you the HTML hex code), but I think it's fun to it yourself. You can see color palettes I've made here. 

Tools: 
- Photograph that you like the colors of
- Photo editing program (such as Adobe Photoshop)

Finding a Photo

Like with making a color palette offline, you'll want to start off with an inspiring photograph that you like the colors of. You can find photos all over the place online, but some good sources are Tumblr, Flickr and Pinterest. Save the photo and open it with a photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. You can really use any photo editing program, but I use Adobe Photoshop in this example. For this tutorial, I'm using this pretty photograph of a deer I found on Flickr:

Color Palette Template
This is a template I made for color palettes. You can do any layout you want. I find this template to be easy to use. You can save this photo or copy and paste it in to your photo editing program.

Now you have two files open in your photo editing program - your original photo and the template.

Making the Color Palette

You want to put the photo in to the top gray part of the template. You can copy and paste it and see how it fits in to that space. If it's too big, you can resize. In Photoshop, go to Image > Image Size. I usually have the size be 500 pixels on one side and then it automatically resizes the other side. You should have something like this:

Now comes the fun part - selecting colors to put in the color squares below the photo. Use the dropper tool to find the main five colors on the photo. In my screen capture below, the dropper tool is the one right above the paint brush tool (which is selected).







I usually start with the lightest color (that's not white) on the photo and go to the darkest (that's not black). It's best to use a photo that doesn't have a whole lot of colors in it so it doesn't get too complicated. Don't try to get every color in the photo. Just try to find the main theme of colors. Once you find your light color, use the dropper tool to go over it. The color should show up in the square that shows what color you're using in the toolbar. Now, select the first square with the marquee tool (first tool in the toolbar). Use the paintbrush tool (right below the dropper tool) to fill in the first square.

Keep doing this with all the colors you want to use. 

When you're done, you should have something like this.

Here's the finished color palette:

Color palettes are pretty fast to make once you get the hang of it and it's interesting to see what colors come up. If you don't like the result, try using a different image or try again by selecting different colors in the image.

Color palettes on the computer are perfect to use for online art projects such as website design and graphics. I hope someone finds this tutorial useful. The link again to download the template is here. If you try it out, let me know in the comments!