Make Quick & Easy Colour Palettes

Make Quick & Easy Colour Palettes

This short Photoshop tutorial will show you an easy and effective way of making colour palettes.

1. Document Creation

Let’s start by making a new document in Photoshop. You can use whatever size you want, something fairly small though, preferably. I used a document size of 210 x 360 pixels.

Leave your background color as white (#ffffff).

2. Base Squares

In your new document make a bunch of random-colored squares. For this you can use the rectangular marquee tool. Make a selection, color it, move the selection and color it again. Try to use as many different colors here as possible.

Coloured Squares Filled in

I made each of my squares 40 x 40 pixels in size.

3. Colorize

In your layers window, add a solid color layer by clicking the create new fill or adjustment layer button, then choosing solid color from the drop down menu.

create a solid color layer

After you’ve done this, choose any old color for the Solid Color adjustment layer.

4. Settings

Lower the opacity for the color layer to 80%, then change the layer mode to Color.

layer mode and opacity

Since I used a pinkish color I’m left with this palette:

Solid Color Layer Settings Updated

Now you have a very cool colour palette that you can use in your design that will work well together. Save your images as .gif images and open them up any time you need a nice colour palette.

Make Quick & Easy Colour Palettes

Credit to Mash11 from deviantART.