The plug-in costs $39. For $49/year, you can also link your plugin to your online account, sync palettes between multiple computers, and share palettes with colleagues, collaborators, or clients.

In a related vein, developer Anastasiy Safari has created MagicPicker, a $7 non-modal color picker/color wheel that builds on his free ColorPicker panel (see my earlier post for details). Here’s a screenshot:

And, of course, don’t forget about the excellent Adobe Kuler, integrated into Photoshop CS4 and other CS4 apps via its own panel (screenshot). Choose Window->Extensions->Kuler to try it out.

Explore the Kuler global community with Community Pulse, a big picture view of color usage. This is a beta feature, using data visualization (screenshot) to show the relative popularity of colors across a sampling of countries, time periods, and tags.

To check it out,

• Sign in with your Adobe ID to play around with it
• Mouse over the histogram to see the hues on the color wheel
• Try the granularity slider to see more/less color detail
• Use the comparison icon (two circles) to compare/contrast

If you have questions, check out Kuler Help.  And don’t forget to check out the Kuler panel in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and InDesign CS4 (see Window->Extensions->Kuler).  Here’s a couple of screenshots, plus a video demo. [Via]

Other new tweaks debut today on kuler as well:

• Time-based theme browsing (last 7 days, last 30 days, all days), to surface more user-generated content
• Theme details now includes a More Info view, where you can choose your avatar and find the theme’s direct link (for blog links, or to email or IM, etc.)
  

• Use color extraction to quickly and automatically generate a color theme from any uploaded photo or other image. Explore different moods, such as bright or muted, to see different colors, or drag the markers to select colors. [Hit "Create" over in the left-hand navigation, then select "From an Image" at upper-left.]
• Endless favorites: Now save as many themes as you like, and browse them in your Mykuler area
• Browse by Random (randomly selected) themes, in addition to Highest Rated, Newest, and Most Popular

Enjoy! [Via Sami Iwata]

• Browse color themes from the kuler website while offline (up to 100 themes cached per feed)
• Drag and drop themes onto your own desktop as transparent "tear offs," which can be scaled and viewed over any application
• Access themes from Mykuler (must be signed in)
• Download themes as ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) files directly from the kuler desktop (must be signed in)
• Browse the new RSS feed "Random"

Here’s the full feature list (PDF) in case you want all the details. [Via Sami Iwata]

Completely tangential but involving colors: Art Lebedev’s Optimus Tactus keyboard concept. [Via Scott Valentine]

*The name is a bit of a misnomer [name now updated], as Photoshop is Carbon-based (as are Final Cut Pro, iTunes, Office, etc.).

Seems like there just might be something to this desktop/Web hybrid thing.  Perhaps we’ll get it into Photoshop yet. :-)

Speaking (completely tangentially) of Color-Related Technologies with Funky K-Based Names™, the color bars of Pioneer’s Project Kuro remind me of kuler.

Adobe’s kuler online application offers a subset of Live Color in a Web-hosted, Flash-powered environment.  It offers powerful tools for creating color harmonies, plus tools for saving color sets & sharing those with others.  As noted recently, feeds of these colors can be sucked into other apps.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I want to make it possible to extend Photoshop (and all Adobe apps, for that matter) by dropping in Flash-based palettes/panels.  So, here’s a thought: what if we gave Photoshop (and maybe other Suite apps) the ability to use kuler to create and modify color harmonies, and to upload/download color sets to share with others?

Here’s a really simple mockup I created to show how it might work.  You’d be able to use the color wheel to create color sets based on rules (Analogous, Complementary, etc.).  Clicking on the resulting colors would let you paint with them in Photoshop, and/or save them as color swatches.  You’d also be able to view, search, and use harmonies created by others & shared via kuler.

What do you think?  I created a two-question survey to gauge your response.  Comments are also welcome. [Update: The survey is open again. I didn't realize that Survey Monkey had a 100-response limit on their free account. Clever, clever...]

Thanks,
J.

Elsewhere in the world of cool screensavers, groundbreaking Flash coder Yugo Nakamura has created Kaze to Desktop, a Windows "screensaver which moves according to the current wind (=kaze) conditions of your city."  Check out the video to see some super-smooth action. (The scattered piles of Windows chrome remind me of the "crash board" Mordy Golding spotted on a client visit.)

Now Microsoft engineer Saveen Reddy has used the API to enable drawing kuler colors in Visio.  Not having a copy of Visio, I can’t give this a spin, but the integration should make it easy to apply popular color themes to your artwork.  Very cool.  [Previously: It's also possible to pull kuler feeds onto your desktop or into Dashboard, and to use them inside the Flash authoring environment.  Update: A free script lets you use .ASE swatch files in After Effects, making it possible to pull in kuler harmonies.]

In other kuler news, PM Sami Iwata reports that they’re running a “theme drive” to collect autumn-inspired themes.  She writes,

kuler members can submit themes around the autumn season and also “vote” for
themes by rating and downloading them. At the end of the drive, the
kuler team will select a few of the highest rated and most popular
autumn themes to appear on a kuler t-shirt. If your theme is selected,
you will get 6 kuler t-shirts with your theme on it.

Hustle up, though: the theme drive runs from now until this Friday at 5:00 PDT.  More details are here.

This is a great example of how opening a door to online community can enrich the desktop experience.  If you know of other cool, usefully connected desktop apps (via Flash panels or any other method), please share ‘em.  It’s very handy to have these on hand as we plan the future.

For other cool Apollo bits, check out the technology showcase on Labs.

Note: By default, kuler installed itself on my Mac using my user Applications directory, rather than in the root Applications directory that I normally use.  This isn’t a big deal, and you can easily change the install location, but I mention it in case you find yourself wondering where the app has been installed.

Fast forward to the present: we’re now starting to realize some of these long-sought benefits.  In just over a year of Adobe and Macromedia being a single company, here’s new integration we’ve been able to deliver (continued below/in the extended entry):

Photoshop

• Flash does rich import of PSD files for the first time.  I once calculated that getting a 20-layer PSD into Flash intact took 168 steps; now it’s more like two, and the results are far richer.  Not only does Flash preserve layers and their names; it also can handle layer nesting, blending modes, layer effects, and more–even preserving live text. Check out the screenshot. If you use Photoshop and Flash, there’s your upgrade right there.
• Copy/paste to Dreamweaver: Want to move a chunk of a design to Dreamweaver?  Copy it in Photoshop, paste in DW, and the latter will pop up its embedded Fireworks optimization engine (equivalent to Save for Web).  Once you save the resulting JPEG/GIF/PNG, you can select it and jump back to Photoshop, where the original PSD will open up.  Copy and paste again to update the optimized image.
• Export of high-res imagery to Flash via Zoomify: Photographers are laying out hundreds of dollars for 8, 10, or more megapixels, then paying for the data in storage and processing time, only to chuck 90% of when going to the Web.  That’s some weak sauce.  I’ve posted tons of examples of how Zoomify export from Photoshop lets you work around screen & bandwidth limitations.
• Fireworks does better PSD import and export: We heard you. In addition, Fireworks’ new Pages feature works great with multiple imported Photoshop files.
• Photoshop embeds the Flash Player: You can now use SWF files as the front ends to Photoshop scripts, opening a huge door to the Web.
• Export of Flash Video (FLV): If you’re using Photoshop CS3 Extended and Flash CS3 Professional, you can now export video from Photoshop as streaming Flash video.  If this doesn’t tell you we’re in a whole new world, I don’t know what will!

Illustrator

• Symbols work more like Flash.  Did you even know that Illustrator had symbols?  Probably not, because creating them was subtle & editing them was a real pain (sorry, guys–but I know you know).  Now they work just like they do in Flash: Select artwork and hit F8 to create a symbol.  To edit it, double-click it and you’ll be editing right there, on the artboard, with the rest of the document ghosted out.  You can even specify whether it’s a graphic or a movie clip & give it an instance name.
• Flash does high-quality AI import.  Now when you import an Illustrator file into Flash, you’ll get options for preserving layers, layer and object names, symbols, blending modes–the works.  It even gives you a little object-by-object incompatibility report when it hits things that don’t map well (e.g. really complex nested blending in Illustrator).  Here’s a screenshot.
• Copy/paste from Illustrator to Flash:  Just as important (maybe more so), these same import hooks work when you copy and paste from AI to Flash.  Even blending modes and symbol names are carried over.  Damn!  (Sorry if I’m a little breathless, but I suffered through this workflow sucking for years.)
• Support for SWF panels*: Illustrator can now be extended with SWF from Flash and/or Flex, providing integration with kuler as well as a new technology called knowhow.  Mordy Golding’s got details.

Flash

• In addition to what’s mentioned above…
• New Adobe panel system: The Flash interface has been revised to use the new panel system that’s shared with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.  (The teams plans to bring the system to apps like Dreamweaver and Fireworks in the future, but time didn’t permit it for CS3.)
• More Illustrator-like pen tool: I don’t have all the details here, but the pen tool in Flash should now be more powerful & more consistent with what’s in Illustrator.  At the same time, Illustrator has added a Flash-like Eraser tool (on the heels of the Flash-inspired Live Paint introduced in CS2).

There’s more going on (mobile integration via Adobe Device Central; XHTML export from InDesign; Web presets in Illustrator; Photoshop layer styles & video layers in After Effects; video-oriented crop overlays in Illustrator…), but I’ve got to cut myself off at some point. :-)

* A note about nomenclature: The word “palette” has been replaced by “panel” across the Suite, but the two are interchangeable.

Knowing this group, they’ll keep cranking out good stuff.  In the meantime, if you have feedback on the widget, please let the team know via the kuler user forum.