Quilting 2.0: ColorSchemer app

Quilting has developed in the 21st century. And so have I! That means, I am a dinosaur and proud of it. I quilt by hand, patch by hand, and do make the incidental machine quilt for a quickie. But on the other hand, I will use apps on my Iphone and software to design my quilts, to get inspiration by looking at other quilts and color palettes.

Choosing colors for a quilt is for a lot of quilters a difficult step in the quilt making process. I followed a great course, bought a color wheel, learned about tones, hues and color value, but still it can be difficult to interpret whether the colors should be darker, lighter, more values, less of one color and more of the other.
And that's where my Iphone or PC comes in.

Today I downloaded for my Iphone (today for free in the Europe Appstore, don't know how long that will be, US 2,99$(edit: today I was informed that the app is free in the US too!)
ColorSchemer.
A much simpler product to develop color schemes is available from the same company, it's meant for working online with PC and Mac and for free, check out this website.

Homepage

ColorSchemer gives you the opportunity to work with prepared color palettes of participants, but you can also create your own color palette. Let me take you through the app.

Opening the app gives you the homepage. It's a huge range of color palettes, developed by all users of the app, who uploaded their palette for others to use. All these ranges of colors may inspire you to go out of your comfort zone and check what others did create.

Now suppose you are a in a creative mood or want to get creative without spending tons and tons on fabric in all tones, hues and values. Click on the plus-sign on the top right. That's where your creativity will start!

In the plus section are 4 options: the Color Wheel, LiveSchemes, PhotoSchemer and Spectrum. I'll guide you through all of them.

The Color Wheel is based on the standard color wheel (Itten, I presume, correct me if I'm wrong, because Goethe and many others have been working on color theory too) and offers you the opportunity to select 5 hues all over the color wheel. By tapping on the middle of the color wheel you can select darker and lighter versions of the same color (tints and tones).
For the more advanced: By tapping on the three horizontal stripes you can influence the color by moving the cursor on the line for Red, Yellow and Blue. When you experiment with it, you will notice you can find your greys, blacks and whites, and play with shadows and saturation.
For those who read this last part and think it is Gobbledygook, forget all the theory and play!

Check out that you can also change the width of the block you color. A lot of dark red (see the photo in the middle) gives a whole different palette than when the palette is divided evenly (see the picture on the right).
When you got this, you got 75% of the app. If that's what you get from this log, you can create a lot! But there's more!

LiveSchemes

The next button (second from the left) is the LiveSchemes. When you made a palette in your Color Wheel, you can refine it in the second step, or start from scratch. The five circles are your colors, the lines are the representative of the spread of your colors. You can play with your palette by moving the circles on the line, or by turning the lines. The chain sign on the lower left fixes your lines. That means you can turn your lines, the spread will remain the same, but the colors change. When you see dotted lines, you can move one line instead of all of them.

The greyish dot on the lower right offers you the option to change from hues from a center of dark to medium on the outside to a center of light to medium.

PhotoSchemer

The third button is about selecting colors from a photograph. Take a picture or select a picture from your film roll and select the colors you want to see. Just tap the swatch you want to have that color and click on the picture which color you want. It's as easy as that!

Spectrum

The last button, Spectrum, is for professionals IMHO. It's about finding the exact value of a color yourself. I love the option of the color wheel, the fine tuning of the LiveSchemes, but for me this is a bit too much for now. However, you might be delighted with the option. Just slide over the color line, tap in the cloud of values above and your selection is there!

The app does not offer options like automatic color schemes for monochromatic, analogous, triadic etc., but for a free app, I certainly do not complain, I love it! Would I pay 3 dollars for it? Yes. It would give me the opportunity to play with colors, check out combinations and even take pictures of several fabrics and combine them in this app. For the more advanced stuff, like working with specific spreads following the color theory, other, more expensive apps offer more opportunities to be assisted. This app gives you the opportunity to do it yourself. And that's a boost for your creativity!

Have fun quilting!
Anymart

P.S. The ChromaOM company doesn't know who I am and do not pay me to write this. I could get lost in the middle of the jungle of Africa and they wouldn't know. I just love the app.