From time to time, we all ask ourselves this question: which colors to choose for our next project? Often, we find inspiration during our travels or walks in nature, or from a work of art. But it can be a little difficult to replicate the shades of color that we see. This is when “Adobe Color” can help us. 

Adobe has an online site where you can play with color wheels for free, and even extract the colors from an image. You don’t have to have an Adobe account to use this tool and the free version is pretty powerful! 

Recently, I was looking at some vacation photos from a few years ago, and found this picture taken in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. It reminds me of some quality family time and I love the colors: acid green and blue-gray.  I'd like to make a quilt that captures this moment through its design and colors, and I’ve used "Adobe Color" to help me create a palette. 

After selecting and uploading your image to the site, you click on “Extract Theme” at the top left of the page. This will help isolate and identify various colors from the image. You can check out several variations depending on what kind of mood you’re going for, for example, if you’d like a colorful or a muted color palette. In the example below, I’ve chosen the “bright” mood in order to generate a rich and diverse palette. 

If you have an Adobe account, you can save the result, but no worries, you can just take a screenshot and save it that way if you don’t have an account.  Here, in my screenshot below, you can see on the bottom left of the image, the numbers in hexadecimal code, which are the codes used for colors in digital media. 

To find out the equivalent in the Pantone color system, you can search in Google (or in another search engine) “hex pantone color conversion” and you’ll find several websites that can convert for you. The easycalculation.com/colorconverter website is easy to use, with a lot of possible conversions, but there are a lot of pop-up ads on the website because the conversion tool is free. 

Fabric and thread manufacturers use their own color coding systems, and the website play-crafts.com provides a tool that converts colors from one of your images to color charts from brands/collections such as Aurifil, Kona Cotton by Robert Kaufman or the Bella Solids range by Moda. Just go to the “Tools” tab and then click on “Palette Builder.”

I uploaded my image to play-crafts.com and they recommended using Aurifil thread colors Black 2692, Dark Olive 4173, Very Light Delft 2770, Arctic Ice 2625, Gold Yellow 5015, and Dove 2600 to match my project colors. Luckily, we’ve got Black, Very Light Delft, and Dove in stock in the shop, so I’m all set!

Be sure to use these various websites with caution and verify that they meet your cybersecurity needs before using them! 

Even if you don't want to use one of the websites mentioned above to convert color codes, you can still use "Adobe Color" to help you identify the exact shades that appeal to you and create a harmonious color palette before choosing your fabrics. I played around with the tool a bit and created several palettes. I think my favorite is the “muted” palette but I also like the “deep” palette. Now I have to decide on a quilt design to evoke this trip to the Rockies!

There are a lot of other possibilities to play with color and generate palettes using Adobe Color; this is just a short introduction for people who have never used it! In our next blog post, we’ll explore the Color Wheel a little more and explore how to modify the color palettes that Adobe generates in order to customize things even more.

In the meantime, what do you think of these color palettes - do you have a favorite?