Genopal Color Scheme Generator Software: Weird Name, Cool Tool

Genopal is a color scheme generator software application I just stumbled across, and it’s pretty interesting.

Instead of the standard color wheels most color scheme generator/explorer software programs utilize, Genopal doesn’t give you the option of choosing a color model such as Complimentary, Triadic and such. Instead there are two sliders, one for Color Diversity and one for Lightness Diversity. There’s a “Generate” button which them cycles though color schemes as analagous or as wild as you set the sliders.

The colors sets are all very interesting, and the most interesting is how the software stays aways from going too garish on you. They have some background info on the site about how the human eye evolved not to see all the obnoxious colors available on an RGB computer monitor, but rather the harmonious combinations found in the nature around us. This is where Genopal takes it cue. I like it.

The sample above is a 16-square variation (the center square is your “base” color, and there are 4-up and two others with tons more colors, but they are arranged in an equal grid.

As you generate schemes, you can lock down colors you like and rearrange them as well, only generating new colors where you specify. It really quite intuitive and meditative. It allows you to just daze through until something cathces your eye, instead of fiddling around with sliders and handles ans such. There’s also undo/redo buttons to go back and forth through your generated schemes.

You can work in RGB, CMYK, HSB (or HSV) and HEX (or hexidecimal i.e. web colors) color modes.

Of course, the limitation here is the lack of user control over settings, but that’s not what Genopal is all about. This is more of a discovery application than a tweaking application.

When switch to another application, the window goes into “minimal mode”, where it’s just the color palette, and there’s even an option to have the window float above all other windows so you can eyedropper the color (you do know you can click and hold on the eyedropper and sample colors from anywhere on your desktop, right?). But with the option to save your color scheme as an Adobe Swatch Exchange file, why would you need that? They even support open-source GIMP palettes. I suppose for users of older Adobe software that doesn’t support those swatch files, this would be real useful, and for those not using Adobe software.

Don’t bother hunting for the demo download link on their website â€“ there isn’t one. I even emailed them to let them know, but of course they were aware. Instead they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Or you can just head over to MacUpdate and download a 14-day trial there instead. Windows users can try out the standard version or the Pro version at VersionTracker. Seems there’s no Pro version for Mac that I can find. I have no idea why they have the software for download at the shareware sites and not on their own website, but anywaysâ€¦

And if you don’t want to spend the $24.95 for the standard version, or the ~~$79.95~~ $49.95 (introductory pricing) for the Pro version, there’s even a limited functionality free online version of the color scheme generator. Ouch â€“ $79.95? I didn’t check the prices closely before.

The only other Pro features that (barely) seem worth the immense price upgrade would be the option to choose two colors and generate a scheme from those, as opposed to just one base color and what looks to be a feature that will generate a color scheme automagically from a photo you choose. All the other enticing features seem to be in the standard version, unless I downloaded some old version or something (the about screen reads as 3.0). This is why downloadable demos are necessary. I mean, you can even download a demo of Adobe Creative Suite 3. Without being able to try the Pro version, it looks to me as if it’s worth maybe $39.95 compared to the $24.95 standard version. There just aren’t enough significant unique feature to justify such a huge leap in price.

At the very least, the standard version demo is out there for you to try and it’s very much recommended. Just from working with it a short while earlier today, I found some really great color combos that I don’t think I would have stumbled across on my own, at least not as quickly and without almost any effort, which I was able to do using Genopal.

by George Coghill -
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