Filed under: iPhone, Graphic Design, App Store, iPod touch
First Look: cliqcliq Colors
Colors is a palette generator and editor for the iPhone and iPod touch which updated yesterday to version 1.1 with new features which make it a truly useful tool for working with those hues, tints and shades we come across every day.
Colors is primarily directed at web designers and those working with RGB and Hex colors. It allows conversion between RGB, HSB and grayscale, as well as integer and floating point scales for other screen applications. As of version 1.1, Colors can handle saving multiple palettes, each containing up to 12 colors and saved with individual labels. Manipulating palettes is as easy as dragging sliders and pulling swatches into the color wells at the bottom of the screen. Palettes can be emailed to yourself (or anyone else, with multiple recipients possible) in Photoshop and Illustrator palette formats, accompanied by a bitmap image and a text file of RGB and Hex numbers for each color.
Perhaps the slickest new feature in version 1.1 is the ability to work with photos, either from your iPhone or iPod touch's library, or directly from the iPhone camera. Colors automatically generates palettes based on the visible portion of the image, regenerating whenever the image is zoomed or panned. I found that Colors did a great job of pulling the essential tones from the image, although the palettes tend to default to somewhat subdued colors even when the source image is saturated and vibrant. That's easily fixed with a little post-processing on the palette, using the saturation and brightness sliders in the HSB tab of the editor.
Colors 1.1 is available at the App Store for $2.99USD. If you're in the business of colors, at least those in the RGB gamut, it's worth checking out.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JB said 12:07PM on 10-22-2008
That's a nice looking app, but as a graphic designer I prefer Color Expert.
Reply
Joe Burke said 12:11PM on 10-22-2008
It's a shame that it has one of the worst app icons in existence.
Reply
Shue said 4:55PM on 10-22-2008
I looked them up at: http://www.cliqcliq.com/. The company is based out Reno and SF. The icon totally reminds me of those colorful Casinos, which makes it kinda interesting i think :). Then again, the app itself has more to tell the its icon.
Brian Westphal said 11:07PM on 10-22-2008
Hi Joe, sorry you don't like our icon. We, at cliqcliq, really like it and think it goes well on the iPhone desktop :)
Jack said 2:05PM on 10-22-2008
This is happy news. I was just searching around for a good way to do this. To have it right on my iPhone is very appealing. This will be the first app that I get from the "paid" section of the App Store.
Reply
Rick said 3:03PM on 10-22-2008
The application "Palettes" has a lot more features. (Yes, I know, shameless plug - but true)
Reply
Joid said 3:10PM on 10-22-2008
Looks nice and usefull. But isn't there a Mac app which can do the same?
Reply
Drew said 3:15PM on 10-22-2008
There is also an awesome game called Colorblind that teaches you how to use RGB color. It is really cool. It has 5 stars and has been reviewed 24 times...so it must be good!! Here is the link:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=289218198&mt=8
Reply
iomatic said 4:47PM on 10-22-2008
RGB > CMYK
:)
Reply
cristiana said 5:51PM on 10-22-2008
Since this is a color app, I don't understand why they put reflections and shadows in the color palette. I have no idea what the colors displayed are supposed to be, is it the top or the bottom part?
Reply
required said 6:43PM on 10-22-2008
Like a lot of I'thouchie'Faux'n things it's for show, it's fluff.
Brian Westphal said 11:03PM on 10-22-2008
Hi Christina, thanks for the constructive feedback. We, at cliqcliq, really appreciate it. We added the glassy look to make the app look a little slicker. However, we get the point that it's distracting from the main purpose of the app and we've decided to revisit this in the next version (to be released in the upcoming weeks). That said, hopefully it doesn't take away too much from the app (there are several modes where the colors are displayed purely without the glare effect -- actually the palette editor mode is the only place with this effect) because we think Colors is a fun and incredibly useful app, especially with the camera/photo library integration. I'd encourage you to check out www.cliqcliq.com, which has several additional screenshots of our app. We hope you give Colors a shot or at least reconsider it once we solve the glare issue. Thanks!
martinjy said 6:44PM on 10-22-2008
Why do I need this on my iPhone? Isn't choosing a site palette the sort of thing that's done at a desktop/laptop? Presumably one that's also connected to the interwebs and therefore easily able to access http://colr.org, which does the same thing for $0?
Also, I agree with cristiana - you don't put schmicko glassy overlays on a color app.
Reply
Brian Westphal said 11:17PM on 10-22-2008
Hi martinjy, you've raised a great point. At cliqcliq, we believe that there are a great number of cases when one wants more than just one tool for any particular task. We feel that Colors is a perfect fit into a designers or developers set of tools, even when other great tools like kuler.adobe.com and colr.org are available. For one, we've found that the phone makes a great "dedicated" hardware device for color discovery and management. It's like having a desk calculator for people that deal with numbers all day. Sometimes it's just more convenient than popping up yet another program/website. In addition, being mobile and having a tool like Colors everywhere one goes allows one to take advantage of inspiration no matter where it occurs.
Brian Westphal said 2:55AM on 1-15-2009
Hi, I just wanted everyone that posted with feedback to know that cliqcliq Colors 1.2 was released today and addresses many of the points that people raised. So, thank you all very much. We hope you all love the update!
Reply