palette
Latest
Palette's modular controller is ready to steer your creative apps
Palette crowdfunded its unique modular controller in the hopes of giving you customizable, hands-on control over your creative apps, and it's finally ready to make that technology available to everyone. As of today, you can pre-order Palette kits that scale up depending on just how much tactile fine-tuning you want. The base is a $199 kit with a dial, two buttons and a slider; the $299 Expert and $499 Professional kits throw in more gear, and you can even snag an $899 limited edition in cherry wood. Of course, you can also buy individual parts if you need more. The controller is mostly useful if you thrive in Adobe software like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, but it's also helpful in MIDI music, gaming and most any other program where keyboard shortcuts just don't feel right.
ColorFit uses photographs to suggest colors
ColorFit is a simple app that does one thing: uses a photo you take to suggest color palettes. Using the photograph, ColorFit will suggest a set of colors ("Use this colors" [sic]) using a variety of different color schemes including triad, analogous, complementary, quad, and shades. However, that's all the app does and it doesn't even do it that well. For starters, you are invited to tap anywhere on the screen to take the picture and the spot you tap becomes the background color. Then a number of color blocks fall down from the top of the screen in one of the palette schemes provided. Once the colors are given to you they just sit there. You cannot tap them to get their RGB, Hex, Pantone, or other values. Nor can you export the results into a color palette file that you can later import into another program to use. The best you can do is to take a screen snapshot and then bring the resulting file into a graphics program and use the eye dropper to find out what the colors it chose are. If you compare this to Adobe Color CC for iPhone and iPad, or ColorSchemer for iPhone, you will find the latter are far richer (and free). And in both cases, they let you select multiple elements in a given photograph to use to create the scheme. So, I'm left asking what the point of this app is or why anyone would pay US$1.99 for it? ColorFit requires iOS 7.1 and up, works with iPhone and iPad and is optimized for iPhone 5, 6 and 6+.
Palette's modular controller brings dials and sliders to your laptop (hands-on)
Palette co-founder Calvin Chu has a problem with how people work. "Creative professionals spend so much of their time on the computer, and at the moment, they still use a very generic one-size-fits-all keyboard and mouse interface." It doesn't make sense, he says -- photographers, gamers, film editors, musicians and accountants all using the same interface? Surely there is a better way. "It should be specialized and made for your needs, and that's where we came up for the idea for Palette." Palette is Chu's answer to a world that's discarded tactile dials and switches for keyboards, mice and touch screens. It's a modular collection of buttons, sliders and potentiometers that can be programmed to do almost anything on your PC. We took a look at an early prototype of the customizable controller to reacquaint ourselves with the tactile world.
Palette embraces the buttons, dials and sliders that touchscreens forgot
Gone are the days of buttons, switches and dials. We're all touchscreen and trackpad now. If you're among those that miss the tactile sensation and precision that switches and toggles offer and have $100 or so burning a hole in your pocket, however, you're right in the pitching sweet spot for Palette's Kickstarter campaign. The module controllers daisy chain in the configuration of your choosing to create a customize hardware interface for a number of different scenarios, including gaming, creative suites and even live DJing. Palette's also offering up a number of aesthetic choices for the controllers, including brushed aluminum and cherry wood -- there's also built in LED lighting, for those impromptu parties you're no doubt planning. The team behind the creation is shooting for $95,012 over on the crowdfunding site. A pledge of $99 will get you the starter kit, which includes four modules. That's set to start shipping in June.
Visualized: 50 shades of Nexus, by ASUS
ASUS is never shy at showing off its creative side. At Taiwan Designers' Week last Sunday, we spotted the company's above art installation dubbed "Palette": a mesmerizing circle of 50 overlapping Nexus 7 back covers, each in its very own shade of color. Interestingly, all of these were actually used in the development process of Google's Nexus 7, which just goes to show the kind of mad dedication ASUS had put into the joint project. But wait, there's more! To match the event's "Flow" theme this year, ASUS decided to also show off parts of the design process that determined the final appearance of its other hero products -- hence the title "Becoming" for the booth's own theme. For instance, much like what the company's lovely Michelle Hsiao showed us on the Engadget Show, the booth again featured a handful of tablet chassis parts and dummies (mainly of PadFone, Zenbook, Transformer Prime and a 7-inch device) at different stages of their development, complemented by a generous selection of colors and finishes. Only this time the designers used some of them to create gradient wall art that we wouldn't mind having at home. Check them out after the break.
NTT DoCoMo introduces Palette UI for Android, breathes life into your app tray
If you blinked for even a second during the announcement of NTT DoCoMo's summer lineup, you may have missed the mention of an exclusive Android skin dubbed "docomo Palette UI." At the time, all we knew about this international-interface-of-mystery was that it had a heavy emphasis on app management. After gazing upon a recently-published YouTube video and doing a little digging, we can now wrap our minds visually around what to expect. The demo you'll witness below shows off an app tray that's sorted by categories, rather than one buffet that bundles every app you own. It's a welcome idea that will likely be an added value for consumers, but there's one small concern: we've seen this before, most recently in the latest version of MotoBlur, so we would hardly call it innovative. We should expect to see the Palette UI on at least four Android devices coming out this summer, most notably the superthin Medias WP N-06C and powerful Galaxy S II --though we're curious to see what happens to TouchWiz 4.0 on the latter. [Thanks, Derek]
Making Microsoft Office on the Mac look more PC-like
Previously, I've mentioned that, despite their similar DNA and file interoperability, Microsoft Office for the PC and Mac are different in their own little subtle ways. This is part function: for example, Microsoft Excel on the Mac uses the 1904 date system, while its PC counterpart uses the 1900 system. But it's also part form. Upon first launch, Microsoft Word and Excel on the Mac present a more palette-oriented user interface, with a "toolbox palette," when compared to their pre-ribbon Windows counterparts. For some, this difference in UI schemas may serve as an annoyance. Though I'll be using Word for this example, you can also make these changes in Excel using the same steps. To make Microsoft Office on your Mac look more Windows-like (pre-Office 2007, that is), first close the "toolbox palette." Next, click on "View," and then click on "toolbars," where you'll be presented with a host of toolbars to choose from. Despite a myriad of choices, choosing the "standard" (which is already selected by default) and "formatting" toolbars provides you with the most similar UI layout to that I've often seen in Microsoft Word on a Windows machine. While it would be reasonable to assume that wanting to get rid of the toolbox palette would be more applicable to new PC-to-Mac converts, this isn't necessarily so. Regardless of one's sentiments toward Microsoft, most offices are, well, Microsoft Offices running on Windows. A consistent looking Word and Excel on our Macs could better facilitate one's workflow.
Sneak Peek: ColorSchemer Studio 2, pick your palette
As part of my trade, I work a lot with colors. ColorSchemer Studio has long been a valuable tool in my toolkit for picking out color schemes based on solid color theory. It had its shortcomings, though, and some other tools had surpassed it, both on the desktop and on the iPhone. However, I got a sneak peek at the up-and-coming version 2.0 of ColorSchemer Studio, and I'm willing to say that it's poised to regain its lead in the field. ColorSchemer Studio 2 adds an amazing number of new features, and improves on just about every aspect of the existing toolkit. Firstly, I want to highlight that it can now work entirely in the CMYK gamut, if you choose. Screen colors are adjusted to a CMYK profile, and there are export options to match. That's a big deal for those who take their colors off the screen and into the real world. Even though many modern presses can actually get better color from an RGB file, CMYK still rules in the world of offset printing. While it's a huge step for this app, it's not the coolest part ... read on for an in-depth preview.
Palette lunchware app customizes Leopard dock
In honor of the holiday weekend, when many of us overate ourselves into food comas, I'm coining a word to describe a class of shareware apps: "lunchware," those programs inexpensive enough that you could buy them for what you might otherwise spend on lunch. If it's less than $12, it's lunchware, so Cocoamug's new Leopard dock customization tool Palette meets the standard (€6.90, or about $10.20). For less than the cost of a burger and a beer (at least by NYC prices) you can get several Leopard interface tweak tools in one little app.For those who have followed Mat's previous posts on drawer-izing the Dock and creating your own custom drawer icons, Palette lets you quickly swap your own drawer icons in for your stacks (or downloaded icons from a pro) without any messing about. You can also turn dock transparency or 3D effects off, change your Dock or menubar colors, and turn off the dreaded menubar transparency. The unregistered version leaves a little palette micro-icon on your drawers to remind you to register.via Cocoia -- thanks Sebastiaan
TUAW Tip: make friends with Mac OS X's Font and Color palettes
One of the things I'm sure we all love about Mac OS X is how integrated so many of the apps and services are with each other, but did you know that integration can stem all the way down to the fonts and colors you use amongst your apps? In almost any input-based, Cocoa-written app you're running (Firefox, for example, is not written in Cocoa), you can press cmd + t to open a simple, unassuming fonts palette that you've probably seen at one time or another. But if you chose a particular font and size that you like in one program, you can click on the gear in the bottom left of that panel and chose 'Add to Favorites' which places it in a category aptly named Favorites on the left side of that panel. The beauty of this is that any other program that has access to that system-wide fonts palette can also make use of the fonts you mark as favorites. For bonus points, click and drag the dot at the top of that panel to reveal a preview area (pictured) where you can see what your font is going to look like before running with it. Next up is the Color palette, accessible with the cmd + shift + c shortcut. This palette employs the same basic concept: you can use it to find a color you like, and then drag a swatch of that color to the white squares at the bottom of the panel to save a version and share it amongst your other Cocoa-based apps. These little built-in tools can be really handy when working across many apps in Mac OS X. You can set a favorite font in Yojimbo (or your choice of other junk drawer apps), and then use it when chatting with a friend in Adium or iChat. Use a favorite color for highlighting in OmniOutliner? Why not save it for the next Mail message you have to send, or those Final Cut Pro and Motion projects coming down the pipeline?By no means are these a revolution feature of Mac OS X that'll rake in the switchers, but they might just make your daily activities go a little bit smoother.
Widget Watch: ColorBurn
Here's a helpful widget for all you web design/creative professionals who are looking for a little inspiration. ColorBurn by firewheel design is a Dashboard widget that suggests one color palette per day, consisting of four colors and their corresponding hexadecimal values. You can change the widget's background from black to white, and view the previous seven days' palettes. Here's hoping you find it inspirational (or at the least, nice to look at).[Via What Do I Know]
