Some folks are gifted when it comes to choosing colors. Then there are the rest of us. I have a basement shelf full of little tester paint cans because I never can quite nail down that perfect shade I have in my head. Heaven help me if I need to choose a complementing accent color to boot, then all is surely lost. So when I see pictures of rooms with three or four daring but perfect colors, I am in awe and at a total loss as to how to achieve such a look. Thankfully, help has arrived.
Sherwin Williams has an amazing (and addicting) new color selection tool called Chip It! that allows the most hopeless among us to create palettes with the click of a button. Simply go to the Chip It! website, drag the program into your toolbar and then find an image that contains a color scheme you want to emulate. Click on the button in your toolbar, hover over the image and press the Chip It! button that appears. Presto, instant color palette! I can now capture the feel of this pizza, which was pretty darn amazing and worth immortalizing.
There are two downsides here. The first is in order to save your chip cards, you have to log in with your Facebook account. This seems odd and shortsighted, and screen captures are an easy workaround for that. The other downside is that it is sort of addicting. I guarantee you will be Chip It!-ing all types of things, whether they deserve it or not.
The Chip It! applet is a free download available at Let's Chip It!
(Images: 1. Northdixie Designs 2. Richard Popovic)
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Fantastic!
Love this app - it's helpful for artists and crafters too.
Ha. I totally did the same thing. Even "Chipped" Cee Lo and Tory Burch.
http://thenestinggame.com/2012/02/10/friday-five-chip-it/
Completely addicting.
Love this! As a graphic designer I could see how useful this could be as well as getting addicted to this. I will download later today.
This is great. BUT. BUT. BUT. The thing that makes these images lovely is the proportion of color to color. Thinking that you will get a similar feel just because you have matched paint chips is misguided. Proportion is KEY!! Just keep it in mind...
after 2 urls, I'm hooked - the monotone, I-can't-look-up-from-my-computer kind of hooked. this is going to be a very. big. problem.
:-D
I might need to take the rest of the day off just to play with this. The "chip it" link is next to the "pin it" link on my toolbar. Now I'm chipping my pins. If only I could pin my chips, my Pinterest/Chip It continuum would be complete.
Anitano,
You can actually Pin the Chips you create. If you log in, under the share functionality there is a "Pin It" button or you can activate your "pin it" button on your browser bar and grab either the 5 color or the 10 color view right from the page.
I like the idea of this app.
My sister painted her living/dining room/hall/kitchen based upon a pillow she adored at Pottery Barn. It turned out very well.
I adore the seed pallette!
This is better than any video game for a color junkie like me!
Color is always on my brain. I have started composing photo subjects based on the possible color pallets they would produce on these these type of programs...
Wishing you a brightly colored day,
Mary Nolte
omartiger, you are exactly right.
Seriously the easiest-to-use color generator I've seen. I hope this changes my designs into the future. Thanks for the link!
a reader of my blog (who is a photographer) dropped me note mentioning your feature...she was hoping I would comment and share what this software does for those who create original content.
I had copyrights infringed with this app and the infringed work was pinned...I was ultimately able to get the modified palettes removed from the chipping site ... and as always, Pinterest was amazing in removing all copyright infringed work.
this software violates original works by attaching their swatches to other peoples' design or photography, & they don't give proper attribution by linking back to the original source material. this benefits the paint company greatly with having them pinned, but nothing (but violating copyright) for those of us whose work is used.
there are also great creative compromises when it comes to color generating software.
thanks for your time and consideration in hearing my thoughts about it.
best, Jessica (creator of Design Seeds)
ps...if you would like to read my full experience, please check out "chipped off" on my personal blog http://blog.seed-designs.com/2012/02/09/chipped-off.aspx
I was surprised (but pleased) to see the image I made with the Sherwin Williams app here on Apartment Therapy. I really enjoy your site. I appreciate that you attributed the image to my blog, but the original image analyzed was found on the New York Public Library's site here (which I had linked to on my blog).
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1018310&imageID=1541700&total=3&num=0&word=D%2E%20M%2E%20Ferry%20Seeds&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pos=2&e=w
In the post where I showed the colors -
DesignSeeds has some good points about copyright infringement, and as an artist I want to work hard to not infringe on other artist's or designer's work. My purpose in sharing the image was to show how I could create a room to get the feeling of that vintage seed poster graphic. Sherwin Williams should reprogram this app so that it retains the link to the original image source as Pinterest does.
Food for thought - the digital world is both a boon and a danger to original content. I usually choose to see the boon part, but we should work to be sure we're not stealing from others.
The link didn't appear to NYPL - here it is again -
New York Public LIbrary Digital Image -
Vintage Ferry Seed Catalog Graphic
could you please add to #1 the NYPL? Thanks. Dixie
I wrote an updated post called "The Dangers of Sherwin Williams Chip-it Application".
Not sure if they just recently changed the functionality on the chip it site, but you can click on the image itself or "image source" link and it links back to the place where the image was chipped originally, kind of like pinterest. http://letschipit.com/Chip/iIBoty
still doesn't fix the color accuracy issue, but at least the attribution is better.
I just started with it. I'm having trouble logging in to my account, it has two option one is to log in through your email / user account another option is via facebook account. I opted to sign through an email account after signing up. I tried to open my account & i am unable open it - user name & password did not match. I tried to reset my password several times.. & still could not login to my account. I do reviews on design web pages & Apps. Apparently this one has started on the wrong foot as i assume it would be a similar format as what pinterest has offered?