原文地址: Using Adobe Kuler to Enhance Your Photoshop Color Workflow

来源: PsdTuts+ 作者: Kajik

翻译:warmatheArt

Let’s look closely at a crucial and time-saving product for designers called Adobe Kuler. We’ll learn to explore, create and share color themes using the Kuler website and the built in extension of Kuler in Photoshop CS4. What’s Adobe Kuler? It’s a web-hosted application, providing free color themes that can be used by anybody, in any project you are working on. Let’s jump into this article and learn more about Adobe Kuler and how to use it with Photoshop!

让我们走近下面这个能帮助设计师节约时间且功能强大的产品–Adobe Kuler。在Kuler网站上，我们将会会学习到如何发现颜色群，以这些颜色创建一个色彩主题并分享它，以及在photshop cs4的扩展中如何快速的使用这些内容。什么是Kuler？Kuler是一个基于网络的应用，它提供免费的色彩主题，我们可以在任何作品上使用它们（不会有版权问题）。下面这篇文章能让我们获得更多关于Adobe Kuler的信息和使用方法。

Introduction序言

How does Adobe Kuler work? What do I need? The only requirements, for using Kuler, are a Web browser with an enabled Flash Player 9 or higher, since it is Flash based. Additionally, you can access the Kuler extension from any Creative Suite 4 product or use the Desktop Air Kuler application.

Adobe Kuler是如何工作的？我们得准备些什么？要使用Kuler，我们仅仅需要一个可以使用Flash Player 9或者更高版本的浏览器，因为Kuler网站是基于Flash建立的；然后你就可以在任何Creative Suite 4产品（photshop cs4被包含在内）里使用Kuler的扩展，或者直接使用Kuler基于Adobe  Air桌面应用程序（安装需要Adobe Air，一个免费的程序环境）。

出现这个页面提示，说明你的浏览器没有安装flash player 9或者版本过低

（译者使用的是firefox+flash插件，可以正常使用）。

Kuler - Creating, Sharing, and Using Color Themes!

创建，分享，和使用颜色主题！

Whether you are a design professional or a beginner, there will always be a situation, where it’s hard to find the right color theme for a project. This is where Kuler comes in. Kuler not only provides a huge number of color themes, it’s also build on an active community, which creates and publishes the color palettes we are talking about. Let’s learn how to set up an Adobe ID, to log in to the Adobe Kuler website, to browse, save, create and publish your own color variations.

不管是职业设计师还是初学者，都经常会为了寻求一个适合作品的色调而头疼。这就是为什么会有 Kuler！不仅仅是大量的个人在为Kuler创建颜色主题，Kuler更加是一个活跃的团体，我们在讨论一些颜色的时候，就会有人创建并发布相关的颜色样板。下面我们了解一下如何创建一个Adobe ID，这样我们才能登陆Kuler网站，然后才可以在这个充满颜色的世界里寻觅，保存我们喜爱的主题，当然，我们也可以创建并发布自己的颜色主题供别人使用。

Setting up an Adobe ID account for access to Kuler

申请一个Adobe ID账户来使用Kuler

Well, you can use Kuler to experiment with colors and copy & paste the color values, but after signing in, you’ll get access to download the Adobe Swatch Exchange files, which contain the color themes. It’s always stressful setting up all these different accounts on different websites and keeping everything in mind, but Adobe did a good job on this one.

你可以使用Kuler来进行各种颜色的搭配实验，复制和粘贴那些颜色值来使用。但只有登录之后，你才能下载到可以直接使用的Adobe颜色样本文件，这种文件包含了整套颜色主题。要记住在所有不同网站不注册的同帐号总是让人感到胸闷，还好Adobe的各种服务只要一个Adobe ID就行了。

If you already have an Adobe ID, then you can easily login, using the Sign In button located at the top-right corner. You can also click on Register. Adobe will redirect you to their website and guide you through the registering process. After creating an account, come back to continue and login to Adobe Kuler.

如果你有Adobe ID，你可以点页面右上角的“Sign In”轻松的登录到Kuler，如果没有就点击“Register”注册。Adobe 会把你带到注册页面，根据注册向导，可以轻松的完成。得到你的帐号后，再回来登录Kuler。（老外真是细心体贴啊，难道怕Adobe的其他服务会把人吸引的离开Kuler么）

Login登入

Go to the top-right-corner. Click on Sign In and insert your AdobeID and password, then click Go.

点击页面右上角的Sign In后，输入你的Adobe ID和密码，然后GO。

Register注册

Go to the top-right corner and click on Register. You’ll be redirected to the Adobe.com website. Click on Create an Adobe account. Fill out the required information and come back to Kuler to Sign In the way described above.

点击页面右上角的Register注册。网页会跳转到Adobe的网站，然后点击Create an Adobe Account继续注册。加星号的是必填信息，写满。注册成功后回到Kuler用上面说的方法登入。（翻译这段完全是为了保持原文完整性，虽然我的中文版也没完全按标准重述。）

Different Menus and Sections on kuler.adobe.com

不同的菜单和模块

Adobe Kuler is split into different sections. These sections allow you to add or retrieve certain information. Below you can see the single sections with short descriptions, accompanied by images.

Adobe Kuler 分成不同的模块。这些模块允许我们添加和获取一些信息。在下面你可以看到单独的带有简短描述和图片的模块。

Explore浏览方式

* Menu菜单

Explore color themes by either browsing or searching the Kuler database. You can sort listed themes by Newest, Most Popular, Highest Rated or other random options. By setting a time frame for your results, Kuler will only list themes, uploaded in that time span.

通过浏览和搜索Kuler的资料库来找主题。在左侧的主题导航里，我们可以点击Newset，Most Popular，Higherst Rated来分别根据最新的，最受欢迎的，最高得分的颜色主题顺序浏览，Kuler还有一些其他随机的排序选项。我们还可以限定时间范围，这样就只显示在该时间内上传的内容。

* Search搜索

You can narrow down your search results by using the Search bar. You can search by tags, titles, creators or colors. To make it easier for everybody to find the themes you create, you should always choose proper tags.

我们可以用搜索框来精确寻找我们需要的颜色。tags标签，titles标题，creators作者或者colors颜色。想让所有人都能轻松的发现我们自己创建的主题，建议上传时在tags标签里填上描述该颜色主题的最准确的关键词。

Community社区

* Details主题的详细资料

Color themes, found on Kuler, are submitted by the Community. By creating, saving and publishing your themes on Kuler you make them accessible to everybody. In this section other users can retrieve information about the creator, title, different tags and more.

在Kuler上出现的颜色主题是由整个Kuler社区来发布并维护的.我们的颜色主题从建立,存储到发布,可以开放给Kuler中的其他用户。在这个模块中，其他用户可以参与添加主题的信息，包括作者，标题，不同的标签以及更多。

* Comments评论

To give or get some feedback for your themes, add comments. Like on many other websites, you can read comments, but posting comments is only available after Log-In.

我们可以像很多其他网站一样评论其他用户的主题或者被评价，记得登录后才能够发表评论，游客状态只可以浏览。

MyKuler我的Kuler

* MyKuler

The MyKuler section in this image is empty, that’s because I’ve set up a new account, but after creating the first themes, you’ll be able store, view, and retrieve all your saved and favorite themes here. You can save themes as favorites, while you are browsing through the database by clicking on the proper button in the details section. You can later import your saved themes to Photoshop.

MyKuler 模块在下面这张图里是空的，因为我的帐号里没有创建过颜色主题，当我们创建了第一个主题后，在MyKuler-Theme这里就可以存储，预览颜色主题。曾保存过或设为favorite（喜爱）的颜色主题也会出现在这里。你可以用favorites的方式来保存颜色主题，在每个主题的详细资料里有（下载那一排三个按钮中的第一个）Add to Favorites。这样回头可以统一把保存的主题导入到Photoshop里。

Extras其他

* News and Features新闻要点

This section lists information about the current products using or featuring Kuler.

这个模块发布了一些关于Kuler最新消息的重要通知。（在页面的右边）

Kuler - Features特性

Download a color theme as an Adobe Swatch Exchange file

下载到的颜色主题是样本文件

（可以直接在photshop的色板中载入使用）

After signing in, you can download the themes you like by clicking on the download Adobe Swatch Exchange file in the details section.

登录Kuler之后，你可以自己喜欢的颜色主题，只需要点击图中所示的按钮就可以下载。

.ASE Files

.ASE格式文件

This is how the downloaded files will look like. All Creative Suite 4 products support the exchange of colors via ASE files. For example, you can easily exchange single colors or themes you’ve created in Illustrator to a Photoshop project. In our case we want to import the files we’ve downloaded from Kuler.

上图是.ASE格式文件的图标外观。所有Creative Suite 4产品都支持.ASE文件的转换。举个例子，我们可以轻松的把的Illustrator或Photoshop作品中的单个颜色或者整个主题转换成.ASE 文件。对我们来说，就是可以把在Kuler下载的颜色文件导入到软件里。

Load Swatches载入色板

Go to your Swatches Panel, click on the little triangle in the top-right corner. Next Choose Load Swatches, then Select the proper File type and import it. That’s it!

在Photoshop中展开色板面板，点击右上角的三角按钮。然后选择“载入色板…”，在弹出的对话框里选择下载好的文件，然后导入就行了。

Post Comments添加评论

As mentioned above, being a member of the community not only gives you access to the color themes, but also provides commenting and rating which will later help Adobe organize the themes. To leave a comment, go to Add comment. Type in your text, then click submit.

上文提到过，成为社区的成员并不仅可以得到颜色主题，而且可以给主题评价和打分，这样做可以帮助Adobe把这些颜色主题更好的归类。留言的话，点击Add a comment添加一条留言，输入文字，然后点击Submit按钮发表。

Rate Themes为主题投票

The five-star rating system shows you what the community thinks about the theme. High ranked themes will be listed and ordered when choosing Sort by Highest rated/Most Popular and will be featured on the home page.

五星投票系统告诉我们这个主题在社区的受欢迎程度。我们选择Highest rated按分数排列或Most Popular按受欢迎程度排列时，高分主题会在这里优先显示，并且会出现在Kuler的首页上。

Edit/Create Themes编辑和创建主题

So far, we’ve learned how to browse and download themes, but now we want to create our own color theme. Either click on the button you can see below to edit the current theme or click on Create in the menu to create a theme from scratch. Both will redirect you to the Create page. You can then choose between creating a theme from colors or an image.

我们刚刚学习了如何浏览和下载主题，但是我们现在想创建自己的颜色主题了。点击任意一个热门颜色主题，在出现的详细资料中，点击查看/修改按钮（Make changes to this theme and view color values）或者点击左侧菜单中的Create（创建），都可以把我们带到制作页面。可以自行选择是从颜色创建还是从一张图片创建。

Creating Your Own Theme创建自己的主题

Kuler provides very efficient tools to quickly create new color themes. You can choose different harmony rules, use the interactive color wheel and different sliders for brightness and angle, extract colors from an image or simply input color values.

Kuler为快速创建新主题提供了极为高效的工具。我们可以选择不同的调色规则，然后使用交互式色盘、亮度以及不同颜色模式的滑块来建立颜色，也可以从图片中提取颜色，当然，也支持直接输入颜色代码。

Base Color and Related Colors基础颜色和关联颜色

Like the name says, you can choose a Base color and build the color theme around it. After setting the Base color, four other colors are available to choose. Harmony rules will apply to the base color and affect the colors around it. By dragging and dropping on the color wheel, you can adjust the base color. The other colors will then move simultaneously.

就像名字里说的那样，你可以选择一个基础颜色然后创建以它为中心的颜色主题。在设置了基础颜色之后，另外4个关联颜色会自动生成，调色规则可以让你在改变基础颜色时自动改变它们。我们可以在色盘里拖动调整基础颜色，关联颜色会根据规则一起移动。

Color Rules色彩规则

The color rules are based on color theory. If you are interested in the theory behind Kuler, check out the links provided below. After selecting the base color, select one of the following rules to quickly create harmonious themes. I think the best way to understand what any single rules does is to experiment with each of them. By selecting Custom, Kuler gives you the freedom to select colors individually.

这些色彩规则都是基于色彩理论建立的。如果你对Kuler上的这些理论感兴趣，可以到下面提供的链接里去看看。选择基础颜色之后再选择一个色彩规则就可以快速的创建出一个协调的颜色主题。我想理解这些色彩规则最好的方法就是一个个的去试一下。如果选择Custom（自定规则）的话，你可以自由的调节单个相关颜色。

• Analogous（相似颜色）
• Monochromatic（单一色相）
• Triad三元组（在色盘中呈120度相交的三个色调）
• Complementary（补色）
• Compound（在多个色调中产生）
• Shades（在同一色相中产生比基础色调暗的颜色）

Color Wheel色盘

Move the markers on the interactive color wheel to choose the colors in your theme. Do this by either using a color rule or individually selecting colors. Below the color wheel is another Slider, which adjusts the brightness of the colors.

通过在交互式色盘里移动标记点来选择颜色。可以选择一个色彩规则来完成，单独的调整颜色也行。在色盘的下面是控制颜色亮度的滑块。

Color Values颜色值

If the color wheel is imprecise, you can additionally adjust the colors in your theme by inputting numeric values for the HSB, RGB, CMYK, LAB, or HEX color models. If you only want to change a single color, make sure Custom is selected, since entering a new value will adjust all the other colors in the theme. If you want to experiment with the theme, use the color sliders under each color swatch. For those of you who are not logged in, you can easily create themes and copy & paste the values to Photoshop or any other Software.

如果色盘里的颜色还不够准确，你可以为颜色输入一个具体的数值，Kuler支持HSB, RGB, CMYK, LAB 和 HEX 这5种颜色模式.如果你想只改变一个颜色，在色彩规则中选中Custom，然后输入一个新的数值会调整它。接着再选回之前的色彩规则来做整体调整。使用各模式的颜色滑块。会有各种新奇的结果，方便我们做颜色实验。以上这些，如果你没有登录的话，也可以轻松的创建颜色主题，然后将结果的数值粘贴到 Photoshop或者其他软件里。

Color from an Image从图片创建颜色主题

A very neat feature of Kuler is the extraction tool which generates themes from an image. You can upload images from your desktop or use images from Flickr. Just as the harmony rules, Kuler provides different Moods: Colorful, Bright, Muted, Deep, Dark, and Custom. The moods you can choose from, will automatically generate appropriate colors. By moving the markers around, Kuler picks the color of the current position and displays it, below the image, in the color theme preview. Kuler supports TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats.

Kuler还提供的一个非常绝妙工具，就是从图片中提取颜色来生成主题。我们可以从本地上传或者使用Flickr相册里的图片。同样这里也有调色规则，Kuler为我们提供了下面这几种模式：Colorful（五彩缤纷）， Bright（明亮的），Muted（浅色的），Deep（深色的）， Dark（灰暗的），和 Custom（自定）。选择规则后，会自动从图片中提取生成颜色。通过移动标记点的位置，Kuler提取当前位置的颜色并中图片下面的主题预览中显示出来。Keler支持的图片格式有TIFF，JPEG，GIF，PNG和 BMP。

Saving and Publishing保存和发布

Before saving your themes, you should always give it a proper title and tags to make it easier for other users to find. You can choose to save your themes in private mode to your MyKuler section or share them with other members, who can rate them and add comments. Tags and comments are displayed in the details section. Popular tags are displayed in a certain text size. The larger the size, the more popular the tag word. Creator’s can set an avatar or personal color swatch as their default picture. Other members can click on avatars to view all the themes created by that member.

在保存主题之前，我们需要给他取一个恰当的标题和准确的标签，以便于其他用户发现。我们可以选择保存为Praivate mode（私人文件）放在Mykuler里面，也可以选择和其他用户分享（选Public），这样可以得到投票和回复建议。标签和回复会显示在该主题的详细信息模块里。热门的标签会以特定的字号出现。越大的字号，说明标签越热门。主题作者们可以用图片或者一个色板的缩略图作为自己的头像。其他用户可以通过点击头像来查看所有该作者创建的颜色主题。

Using the Kuler Extension in Photoshop

在Photoshop中使用Kuler扩展

Downloaded Adobe Swatch Exchange files can be used as color swatches in all Adobe CS4, CS3 and CS2 products. We’ll take a look at Photoshop CS4.

下载的Adobe Swatch Exchange Files（色板扩展文件），可以在Adobe CS2以上版本中使用。我们看看Kuler扩展在Photoshop CS4中的使用情况

Find and Open the Kuler Extension找到并打开Kuler扩展

With the new CS4 version, Adobe integrated Kuler right into Photoshop. You can find it by going to Window > Extensions > Kuler. The Kuler Panel will appear. In case you still don’t know what Kuler is or how it works you can read the information, by clicking on the About tab. You can additionally read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy if you are interested.

在全新的CS4版本中，Adobe 在Photoshop中整合了Kuler。你可以在通过点击“窗口”-“扩展功能”-“Kuler”来开启它。加入你仍然不知道Kuler是啥玩意或者不知道它是干什么的，你可以通过点击“关于”按钮来获得一些信息，如果感兴趣的话也可以看看那些使用条款和隐私策略什么的。

This extension provides access to Kuler via RSS feed’s. The extension loads the themes directly from the online database. You can also log in to your Adobe account by clicking Window > Extensions > Connections, which will create a connection to Adobe services, while you are using Photoshop or any other Creative Suite 4 product.

这个扩展是通过Kuler的RSS feed向我们提供资源的。直接从Kuler的在线数据库载入颜色主题。你也可以从你的Adobe 账户登录（上文有说怎么申请），点击“窗口”-“扩展功能”-“连接”，会出现一个登录adobe服务的窗口，输入帐号和密码，登录成功后会显示是否注销，直接关掉窗口即可。

Features: Browse and Create功能介绍：浏览和创建

*Browse浏览

The Browse tab reveals a list of currently uploaded and available color themes. To use this feature an Internet connection is required, since the extension uses a RSS Feed to read and list the color themes in Photoshop. You can browse, search and sort themes the way we did on the Kuler website. At the bottom of this section, you can see the arrows pointing up and down. These help you to view the previous or next sets of themes.

浏览标签下面显示了当前上传的和可用直接使用的颜色主题。注意：需要连接到网络，才能载入RSS Feed和颜色主题列表。我们可以浏览，搜寻和整理主题，使用方法和在网站上类似。在Kuler面板底部，我们可以看到向上和向下的箭头，用来查看上一页和下一页的内容。

*Create创建

The create tab reveals a smaller version of the Create Page on kuler.adobe.com. As you can see, these are the same functions like choosing a harmony rule, adjusting the single colors or brightness, setting the base and related colors and retrieving the values. At the bottom of this section there are additional buttons, which let you upload your theme directly to your account or download/save the current theme.

创建标签显示的内容是Kuler网站上Create页面的缩小版。我们可以看到那些熟悉的强大功能，比如选择规则，调整颜色，亮度，设置基础颜色和关联颜色等等。面板底部的三个按钮分别是保存主题，添加到色板以及上传到Kuler。

Swatch Panel色板

This is how the standard Swatch Panel looks like in Photoshop. You can open it via Window > Swatches. In a previous step we’ve learned how to import ASE files to our Swatch Panel. The extension makes it a lot easier for us. We can easily browse and directly add themes to our Swatch Panel though without downloading and importing ASE files from the Kuler website.

下面这张图是标准的photoshop色板。可以同过点击“窗口”-“色板”调出。前面我们学习过如果导入ASE格式的主题文件到色板里。 Kuler扩展把这一步变得极为简单。我们可以方便的浏览主题，并直接添加到我们的色板中，而不用麻烦的跑到Kuler网站上下载ASE文件，然后再回到 Photoshop中导入它们。

Directly Add Themes to Swatches直接添加主题到色板里

The button on the bottom-right-corner, adds the theme directly into your Swatches Panel. You can now select single colors as your Foreground or Background color and apply them to your project. You can reset or delete the colors by clicking on the little triangle in the top-left corner.

Kuler扩展面板中的左下角，有个“将所选主题添加到色板”的按钮。现在我们可以任意选择颜色做为前景或背景然后在工作中使用他们。在色板右上角的三角菜单里，我们可以重设色板或者删除不要的颜色。

Using the Adobe Air Kuler Application

使用Adobe Air Kuler的桌面应用程序

Download and Installation下载和安装

So far, we’ve used the website and extension in Photoshop CS4, but as I mentioned before, there’s a cool Air application which runs on your desktop. The only requirements for using it is having Adobe Air installed on your computer.

目前为止，我们已经用过了Kuler的网站和Photoshop CS4中的扩展，别忘了我在前面提起过，还有一个超酷的Air程序可以独立运行于Photoshop之外的。装之前需要先安装Adobe Air程序环境（下面提供了官方下载链接，速度慢的话可以去迅雷搜索）。

• Download Kuler Desktop here (PC).（Kuler桌面程序PC版）
• Download Kuler Desktop here (Mac)（Kuler桌面程序Mac版）
• Download Adobe Air here.（Adobe Air程序环境）

You can start the installation by double-clicking the Installer. The setup will guide you through the single steps. After you’ve successfully installed the widget, open it. You should see something similar to the widget in the following image. This Air application works exactly the same way the extension does, providing some extra features. Themes downloaded via the application will be directly added to your Swatch Panel.

双击安装程序，按照安装向导的要求很快安装成功。打开Kuler，呃，好像很眼熟的样子。这个Air程序和扩展差不多，还提供了一些其他的功能。主题下载后会直接添加到photoshop的色板里。

Features特点

You can now browse, search, and save themes directly from your desktop. You can drag individual themes to your desktop, where you can scale them to any size you want, copy swatch values directly from the application or visit the selected theme at kuler.adobe.com to retrieve additional information or comments. I recommend playing with it to get to know the application. It’s a really helpful tool to have on your desktop when working with any Adobe Product.

你现在可以在桌面上直接浏览，搜索和保存主题。还可以单独把一个主题拖动到桌面上，任意改变它的大小，复制颜色值或是访问Kuler网站去给主题添加信息或投票评价。建议多玩玩来增加对程序的了解。在我们使用任何Adobe的软件时，有Kuler的帮忙，真的很有用。

Additional information附加信息

Kuler Links 相关链接

• Kuler Help帮助
• Kuler Forum论坛
• Kuler Developer Resources开发者源文件

ther websites which provide color themes and palettes

其他一些提供颜色主题和图案的网站

• Colourlovers.com
• Colorschemedesigner.com
• Colorcombos.com
• And more color themes here

Conclusion写在最后

I use Kuler to on my projects and take advantage of it’s desktop features. Now that you know how Kuler works, search, save and use the themes you find on Kuler. Also, use them as an inspiration for creating your own and unique color themes. I often create themes which I later don’t use. Instead of deleting them, go to Kuler and upload them. In case I’ve missed something, feel free to let me know in the comments so the other readers can learn it too.

我在工作中使用Kuler并记录了它的那些优秀的功能.现在大家知道了Kuler的如何工作,搜索,保存以及使用在Kuler找到的主题,并且还可以有灵感的去创建一个属于自己的独一无二的颜色主题.我经常创建一些自己以后用不上的主题.拿去Kuler上传要比删除它们有乐趣的多.假如文中有什么不对的地方,请在留言中告知我,这样其他读者也可以知道.

译者注：第一次翻译，欢迎指正。