One thing I always remember, and you can look at any colorful garden to check this out, is that nature never clashes. Nature puts some of the most outrageous colors together without a problem despite our human rules.

Usually I will use a color picker to check out colors in an image, but here is an online tool that will do the job quickly for you.

First you have to upload an image. I just used my avatar image in this instance (and, I admit, out of curiosity!).

The original image:

Original Image

The resulting color scheme:

Color Scheme

and another!

Original Image

The color scheme:

Color Scheme 2

You can try out the free online Pictaculous Color Palette Generator for yourself here – it’s fun too and there is quite a bit more to explore when you have generated your own color scheme!

First, get the image properties of the gradient you need to change. It’s easy in Firefox – right-click on the image and choose ‘view Background Image’. When the image opens, right-click again on the image and choose properties. In properties it will give you the dimensions (width always first, height second). Write them down… At this stage, also make a note of the filename of the image as it will be easier for you to use the same filename for your new image – noting whether it is a.png or a .jpg.

For this example, I made 100px x 100px images using the dark gray at the top of this blog (#191a1a) and the light gray at the bottom (#c0c0c0) adding the red (#990000) and white (#ffffff) for the 4 color. This time I chose to make .jpg files.

Of course you can make gradients in your favorite graphics program but this is the easy way – try this online Gradient Tool!

To use, simply replace the original gradient image with your new one in your template images folder.

Ever tried the Tartan Generator for a Seamless Background Image? We did and came up with a Joomla! Fast Track Tartan…

diagonal tartan

horizontal tartan

all we need are the bagpipes now!

A couple of examples (don’t forget to change the background color to match the background where the image will appear on your site):

Rounded Corners Size 5

Rounded Corners Size 9

Easy and free – try it for yourself:
roundpic.com

Just a bit of fun and design courtesy of Wordle who say:

“Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”