Adobe has long been known for its overly complex software, but Photoshop and Lightroom have for years been programs that I can’t live without.
Today I discovered a new one: Adobe Capture, an app that makes it really simple to discover a palette of colors for a scene. (You can also make brushes, vector graphics and “looks” for video, but more in another post.)
When in the app, you just aim your phone’s camera at the scene, and it identifies the five most important colors – live, and continually updating as you move the camera. You can save these as a “color theme” and use them in Photoshop as well as other Adobe software.
Since a photo might have some areas that aren’t related to the color theme, you can override the app’s choices just by moving the circles that point to the five colors. But it does a great job without any help.
Here are two examples:
An embroidered placemat from China
A callicarpa shrub aka “beautyberry”
The color theme for autumn leaves along the road is the featured image for this post.
This could be a terrific teaching tool. For me, it is a big help in figuring out the palette for paintings.
Today’s penny is a 1990, the year Photoshop 1.0 shipped.
