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A screenshot of the Yahoo Color Picker.

A Color tool is an application, usually found within image editing software and online, used for the purposes of color management, creating color schemes, picking colors, and more.

Many such tools exist on the world wide web, and generally feature a color harmonization interface, a color picker, RGB and HSL conversion and manipulation, a collection of saved schemes, and other similar characteristics. Web masters, designers, developers, and professionals that work with other types of screen or print media use these tools in their work.

A color tool is necessary in order to visualize color values. When desiging web pages, or utilizing graphic software in order to manipulate raster images or work with vector graphics, the user will be aided by seeing a visual representation of a color, instead of an alphanumeric text value. Other facets of web design, such as spacing or dimensions, or even image manipulation do not require such immediate visualization. In addition, because various colors have relationships to other colors, a tool is useful because it helps find related colors. Color theory explains such relationships. Color tools are also useful because they permit the alteration of a color by different types of values, including hue, saturation, lightness, or RGB and CMYK values.

Color tools can vary in their interface. Some may use sliders, buttons, text boxes for color values, or direct manipulation. Often a two dimensional square is used to create a range of color values (such as lightness and saturation) that can be clicked on or selected in some other manner. Drag and drop, color droppers, and various other forms of interfaces are commonly used as well.

• Color theory
• Web colors
• Color balance
• Color space
• HSL color space
• HSV color space
• RGB color space
• Color
• Web design