Imagine you are out of the office or away from home and a moment of inspiration hits you. You're in the midst of a project, be it a website design, or other project where a harmoniuos color balance is of the essence. Wouldn't it be great if you had a way of getting your sudden color ideas directly into your project from where you are before it gets away from you? Then, perhaps you might like to know about a great new iPhone application introduced by PANTONE this week, called myPANTONE.

Read the Press Release here.

Speaking with Andy Hatkoff of PANTONE last week, I learned just how myPANTONE works and must admit I was quite impressed. With PANTONE being in the business of color communication for 48 years now, this iPhone app surely is the logical next step for PANTONE in this fast-paced industry, providing designers now with the means of a color tool in sync with the spontaneity of inspiration.

myPANTONE comes with plenty of features to search and create custom color palettes right away and with ease. The main screen has a quick search color bar that you can select from using an arrow guide, or search direct by typing in a color name, PANTONE number, or even a descriptive word, and refining the search from the resulting display.

Colors display midscreen, and you can also fan these colors and further select colors by tapping on the fanned deck. You can also find harmonius color combination suggestions, or even cross-reference colors.

As you find the colors you are looking for, you can then drag and drop color chips into the 'Palette Building Well' at the bottom of the screen. And, of course, you can easily drag and drop to delete or replace these chips as necessary. But, what's more, you have all the important color information included with these chips, such as sRGB, L*a*b* and the HTML data.

Now, what I like most about myPANTONE is the ability to create custom color palettes from photos. Palettes can be generated automatically, or you can even select colors directly from a photo simply by touching certain areas within it.

Another very important feature available that really makes this app a wonderful tool is the ability to e-mail color palettes directly for use in 2d software, such as Adobe Creative Suite, CorelDraw, and Quark XPress. You can also share color palettes with friends and colleagues, provided that they also have the myPANTONE app. Of course, you can even share via the likes of Twitter and Facebook, and even upload to myPANTONE.com.

There are also included backing layouts in this app, or you can even use your own photos, so that you can see these colors against a variety of backgrounds (note the corkboard layout pictured at left). Whoever said building color palettes couldn't be fun?

At the very reasonable price of $9.99 (USD), this is a great tool to have handy when inspiration strikes. If you have an iPhone, I would highly recommend looking into making this purchase.

Pricing, Availability and System Information
myPANTONE is available for download at the Apple iPhone App Store for U.S. $9.99/€7.99/£6.99. myPANTONE is compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 or higher, and can be used on the iPhone or iPod® Touch.

Links:

• PANTONE website
• myPANTONE.com
• Apple iPhone App Store

Nick C. Sorbin is a digital artist, sculptor, writer, and Managing Editor for Renderosity's Front Page News.
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