What do you get when Dr. Woohoo mashes up Adobe Illustrator CS3, Flickr and In The Mod: Color Analytics? A free swf Panel that runs inside AI CS3 that allows you to search Flickr & In The Mod, view the colors from each image or painting you select and then save them directly to the Swatches Panel in AI.
Adobe Illustrator CS3 + Flickr + In The Mod mash-up from dr woohoo.
Inspiration
The inspiration for the Flickr integration comes from a variety of sources – watching what Mario and Marcos did with Kelvin’s Flashr; looking at the photographs of the Ronin, Annie Liebowitz and Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir; and of course the colors we see all around us – in the orchids and the sunsets – whose combinations are simply perfect.
System Requirements
– Adobe Illustrator CS3
– Macs (OS X 10.4.10+) or PC
– Active internet connection.
Installation
– After unzipping the attached files, save them in your Adobe Illustrator CS3/Presets/Scripts/ directory and restart AI
Usage
– Before running the script (InTheMod_beta.jsx), either create a new document or open an existing document and be sure that your Swatches Panel is open. (Window Menu: Swatches)
– To run the script, select File: Scripts: InTheMod_beta
Flickr
This will launch a popup panel and loads the swf file. Thanks to Kelvin Luck’s Flashr, an AS wrapper for the Flickr API, just enter a tag to search and retrieve images from Flickr. Select the thumbnail image you would view the color palettes for by clicking on the thumbnail icon. The scroll pane will slide over to make room for the visualization view. If you like the colors and want to add them to your AI Swatches Panel, click on the AI icon in the lower right corner. That’s it!
In The Mod
To access to all of the (in)famous paintings and color palettes on In The Mod, click on the ITM button on the main screen (that has scrollable thumbnails). The process of seeing the color visualization and saving the palettes is the same as above.
Sorting by Hue, Saturation or Brightness
After saving the colors to your Swatches panel, you can also sort them by Hue, Saturation or Brightness. To do so, there’s a trick: click on the open document window (so the focus is pulled off of the swf Panel) and then select from the menu File: Scripts: SortByHue-Sat-Bri. I prefer sorting by Brightness, so I typically enter ‘B’ in the popup prompt. The rest is magic.
Is it perfect? No, far from it. This is a beta and I have a long list of fixes and enhancements I would love to make when I have some spare time, but it is functional and it is extremely fun to use and I felt it was something worthy of sharing.
Download
AI CS3 + Flickr + ITM.
In The Mod: Color Analytics
If you haven’t yet popped over to In The Mod and browsed the different paintings the program analyzes it is well worth the trip. I honestly don’t fully understand all that the program is doing, but I enjoy the experience of seeing the color breakdowns.
(Read the COLOURlovers Interview with Dr. Woohoo)
