Did you know that the Adobe software company (makers of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and other apps) maintains a powerful and free online application for choosing great color schemes, that happens to double as a social network for the nerdiest graphic designers in existence? They do! It's called kuler, and is a pretty sharp little program; Flash-based, of course, since Adobe happens to own that as well, it allows you to not only compare colors easily and assemble a palette up to five tones in size, but then to save that particular scheme under your own name there, share it with others, let others vote on its popularity, even give it a snarky postmodern name, as of course typographers have been getting to do for decades. And this being Adobe, of course, the press of a button will then export that scheme as a working Adobe color swatch file, which can then be opened in any offline application Adobe makes.

It's a pretty sharp little design aid, I have to admit, great for people like me who are better at the type elements of design than colors (ergo the infinite shades of gray at the CCLaP website); plus it gives you the chance to interact with your fellow color specialists as well, to learn more about a particular designer if you want and even exchange professional information. And hey, there are even RSS feeds associated with the service, so that you can have all the latest schemes sent directly to you if you want. All in all, a great little secret service from Adobe, which I wish they'd promote more at their main site.