Color nerds, watch out -- the Kuler app might give you a heart attack from excitement.
Kuler is the name of Adobe's web-based, socially powered color picker. As a long-time Kuler user, I had a feeling of what I might see when I opened the just-released iOS app version. But I saw much more. The mobile app opens up many more doors than the web service ever could.
There are two ways to create Kuler color themes on the iPhone: using the color wheel, and using the camera. The color wheel is exactly the same as the redesigned color wheel on Kuler's website -- you drag small circles around the wheel to create millions of color themes. You also have the standard rules at your disposal (analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary, etc.) to generate a multi-color palette using your chosen color as a starting point. You also have the ability to change hex values for one or all of the colors in your theme.
But the real fun is in camera mode. Point your camera anywhere, and Kuler captures the dominant colors from your surroundings. You see the same small circles used in the color wheel mode spring to life and move around on the screen, picking out colors from the scene and creating themes in real time. Tap the picture to freeze it (this also freezes the current color theme) and you can drag the circles around on the picture to dial in the colors of specific regions or objects. No more snapping photos and trying to match colors on your own later -- you can get those colors, literally, in all of their glory just by holding your iPhone camera up in front of you.
Instead of using the real-time camera capture, you can go into your iPhone's photo library, Google, or Flickr, and complete the same process with a photo you've already taken. When you've finished and have a theme you like, you can name it, add tags, and share it to Twitter. All your work in the Kuler app syncs to your web account and Adobe Creative Cloud, so your previously created and favorited color themes will appear in the app, and your new ones will be added on the website. Adobe is also rolling out Kuler integration with all its CC programs, so eventually your themes will be automatically synced not just to Kuler's website, but to your workspaces in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other programs you subscribe to in the cloud.
While the average person might not want to grab the colors of the interior of their favorite coffee shop every day, anyone who works with color on a daily basis could be saved much time and effort with this app. You won't have to try to recreate colors you see around you within a program, and you'll also have the ease of taking color themes from your favorite physical objects -- posters, artworks, clothing items, your cat -- and placing them directly in your workspace to use in any project.
Since Kuler debuted as a seemingly awesome app, it should be interesting to see if and how Adobe adds to it in the future. For now, I'll be busy Kulering the colors of my living room.
