So I've been spending a bit of time developing logos here at Rockfish lately, and one thing that's challenging is not only defining the company by a single mark but also determining a color scheme that compliments it and is both usable on the web and in print.

I've done some research(googled and iphoned it) to see what is available out there for designers to aid in this process and there are several such as Adobe's Kuler tool and Firefox's add-ons Colorzilla, and Pallet Grabber. All of these are great as tools and guides but I was looking for something a bit more custom. I came across an article on http://www.standardsforlife.com/color-scheme-exercise/ that talks about a very creative process for coming up with your own custom color pallets.

The steps are easy:
1. First you just grab your camera go outside or inside and start taking pictures of things, anything, everything it doesn't matter.

2. Then once you have a few you like take the pics into Photoshop and run the filter pixelate on them (it seems crystalize works best for this, mosaic seems to do a good job but it desaturates the color a bit.)

3. What you are trying to do here is isolate blocks of color to create swatches from.  Then build your pallet isolating 5-6 colors to us.

Here is my example from a picture I took this weekend in Hot Springs: