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The colour spectrum is almost endless. By understanding the basic rules and principles of colour you'll be able to choose your colours to create a harmonious layout.

I'm sure at some stage you've all seen a colour wheel. There are 12 basic colours on the wheel, but by combining these colours in various hints and shades, the opportunity for more colours is almost endless.

Primary colours

Red, yellow and blue form our primary colours. They are true colours because they can't be made up by combining any other colours.

Secondary colours

Green, orange and purple are secondary colours. They are made by mixing equal parts of two primary colours i.e. red + yellow = orange; blue + yellow = green; red + blue = purple.

Tertiary colours

These colours are made by mixing a primary colour with it's adjacent secondary colour e.g. green-blue/green-yellow; purple-blue/purple-red; orange-yellow/orange-red.

When creating your layouts, think about how you're going to use colour to enhance the final result. Try using colours according to one of the following schemes:
Complementary colours

These are colours that lie opposite each other on the colour wheel, for example red and green. Because they're opposites they create a really great contrast when used together and both will appear brighter and more intense.

Split Complementary colours

This is a bit of a different take on the complementary colour theory. Take a colour on the wheel and the two colours adjacent (each side) of it's opposite e.g. if Orange is your colour of choice then the two complementary colours to use with that would be blue-green and blue-purple which are either side of blue (orange's opposite).

Monochromatic colours

As the name suggests, a monochromatic colour scheme is based by a single colour and tines and shades of that colour e.g. Blue and and tints (made by adding white) and shades (made by adding black) of blue.

Triadic colours

These would be three colours that are evenly spaced from each other on the colour wheel e.g. the primary colours red, yellow and blue are evenly spaced from each other on the wheel and would make a triadic colour scheme.

Analogous colours

Any three colours lying next to each other on the wheel would form an analogous colour scheme e.g. red, purple-red and purple.

Colour is the foundation of layouts, it can either make or break your design, choose wisely.
There are many different ways to choose a colour scheme to suit your layout.

A ‘technical’ method of colour-selection involves choosing one or two dominant colours from the colour wheel as shown in the images above, to be used with a small set of complementary colours.

Basic colour theory ( http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html ) concepts like split complementary and triadic colour schemes offer a wide range of variation, particularly when you start throwing in shades, tints, and saturation adjustments.

Matching involves starting with an image or an object (usually a photograph) and picking colours from within to generate a colour scheme.
There is no rule saying that you cannot use monochrome colours (different shades of the same colour) in your layouts, its guaranteed to all flow nicely together, and it gives a great effect.
There are many programs as well as online generators that can assist you in choosing harmonious colours.
Do a search on the internet and see if you find something that will work for you.

Selecting colour from photos is an easy way to collect harmonious colour schemes.
Use your eye dropper tool to click in various places in your layout.
Below are 4 examples (figures 1 – 4), the circles in the photo show you where I clicked, once you click your chosen colour will be stored as your foreground colour, now you can either save this as a swatch or create little squares as I have done and fill it with your colour.

In Photoshop to save your colours as a swatch, make sure your swatch palette is visible, window – swatches, all you need to do is click in the swatches window and it will paste your colour there, once your colours are selected, save your swatch for later use.

Photo by Natasha Whiteley

Photo by Natasha Whiteley

Photo by Natasha Whiteley

Photo by Natasha Whiteley

Another simple way to select colour from a photograph is to use the Mosaic filter in Photoshop.
Open your photo in Photoshop, then go to Filter -> Pixelate -> Mosaic
Set your Cell size to around 50, you can preview your image before choosing okay, the cell size needs to be big enough for you to draw the colours from, use your dropper to select the colours.

Photo by Natasha Whiteley

Have fun playing with colour. Use the colour swatch generator available in the resources section. In the next issue of scrap mag we'll go into how to give your chosen colour scheme an extra little lift and the associations and meanings of different colours.

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NEUTRAL

So soft that it seems almost invisible, a neutral color scheme consists of
huse that have been neutralized by adding their complements.
The further addition of black and white expands the neutral palette.



PRIMARY

The most basic of color schemes: the pure huse of red, yellow, and
blue are combined. The elementary nature of this color scheme make it
a favorite for childrne's books, toys, and bedrooms.
The purity of the primary scheme has made it an importnat palette for
such artists as Piet Mondrian and Roy Lichtenstein.



SECONDARY
The secondary colr scheme combines the secondary huse of
orange, green, and violet. It has a fresh, uplifting quality and can be
made quite subtle by using tints and shades of the secondary hues.



SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY
The split complementary scheme is often more pleasing than a
ture complementary scheme. Choose a hue; the hues on eiher side
of its complement create the split complementary scheme
(orange with blue-green and blue-biolet, for esample).



TERTIARY TRIAD

There are two tertiary triad color schemes,
which consist of three tertiary hues that are equidistant from
each other on the color wheel.
The two tertiary triad schemes are: Red-violet, yellow-orange,
and blue-green; or red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-violet.