With three groups dedicated to the topic, Food has been wetting the color lover's palette [sic], well, probably ever since we first got hungry. And with that time of year (the holidays) upon us; the one when everyone claims to be going back on "the diet" right after the next meal, we thought it would be a good idea to check out some palettes from the COLOURlovers groups Yummy Colours, foodiediles and Eat It Up.

Eat It Up

O, The Oprah Magazine, sometimes simply abbreviated to O, is a monthly magazine founded by Oprah Winfrey and Hearst Corporation. It was first published on April 19, 2000. As of June 2004, its average paid circulation was over 2.7 million copies, two thirds by subscription. A South African edition was first published in April 2002; according to the South African Advertising Research Foundation, its average readership was over 300,000.

Since its inception, Oprah had exclusively appeared on the cover of each issue. The first shared cover is her April 2009 issue in which she appears with the First Lady Michelle Obama. The second shared cover is with fellow daytime host Ellen DeGeneres on the December 2009 issue. Four separate covers were shot for this special holiday issue.

Here is a look at the last year of O Magazine covers and their color trends.

Oprah's Favorite Color?

Green 30.7% | Red 23% | Yellow 15.3%

*Hue occurrence out of a total of 13 covers (both blue & green counted for 1/09)

Covers

Some people call them color palettes and some people call them color schemes... Now we're all part of one big family. We've known Aaron from ColorSchemer for a few years now and have talked on and off about how we could work together. Well, I'm excited to announce that we're not just working together, we're joining color forces.

The new release of ColorSchemer Studio 2 for Mac of is the first hint at what the future holds for that partnership with the integration of the 1,000,000 COLOURlovers palettes directly accessible via the software gallery browser. Pretty soon you'll not only be able to browse palettes from COLOURlovers, you'll be able to save your palettes right to our site from your desktop. You'll see the best of what we've been building and the best from what Aaron's been building begin to form together here and in ColorSchemer Studio.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 for Mac OS X

ColorSchemer Studio 2 is a professional color-matching application for your Mac that will help you build beautiful color schemes quickly and easily.

Use ColorSchemer Studio to identify color harmonies for the web (RGB) or print (CMYK), create palettes from photos, search over a million existing color schemes, mix colors, create gradient blends, and much more!

ColorSchemer Studio 2 takes color matching and management to a new level with a number of advanced new features and tools, including:

CMYK Support

One of the most common feature requests we get is for adding CMYK support, and now ColorSchemer Studio 2 has it!

Not only that, but this new release goes even further by color-managing both RGB and CMYK colors, so you can specify color profiles (just like in Photoshop and other pro graphics apps) to make sure your colors look exactly as you intended.

Color Management/Color Profile Support

ColorSchemer Studio 2 now color-manages all displayed colors. You can now work with specific color profiles to ensure your color-critical work comes out right the first time, whether it’s for the web or print.

COLOURlovers Integration

Connect to the COLOURlovers community to browse, search, and download over a million color palettes right from the program.

LiveSchemes – Color relationships that you define

The new LiveSchemes tools help you to visually create color harmony relationships as easily as dragging colors around the color wheel.

Create custom LiveScheme formulas based on color theory, or your own creativity. You can also reverse-engineer and color-shift existing color schemes with a simple drag & drop.

Browse your saved LiveSchemes to apply custom color theory relationships to any color to build a ready-to-use color scheme.

QuickPreview Layout Templates

ColorSchemer Studio 2 now comes with 13 different QuickPreview layout templates that you can use to experiment with color scheme ideas in a variety of different settings, including website, blog, print and pattern layouts.

Color Variations

Use the new Variations palette to find colors that are similar or related to any starting base color.

Color Groups

Organize your colors into groups or folders within your Favorite Colors when building your color schemes.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 also adds a bunch of other enhancements to give you more control over your colors:

• New ways to pick colors: Use the new spectrum picker, or select from among the included color libraries.
• New import/export formats: Including Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE), PNG, and XML formats.
• Enhanced Contrast Analyzer Check text and background color combinations for sufficient contrast and readability, based on W3C, WCAG, or HP accessibility recommendations.
• Drag-color-to-text Drag a color from ColorSchemer Studio and drop it right into your HTML and it will automatically be converted into a hex value in your code.
• Improved UI: Most tool windows have been combined into an easier-to-manage single-window interface.

Happy Huesdays: Special COLOURlovers Offer

In the spirit of Black Friday... we're extending a more colorful offer. If you purchase a license of ColorSchemer Studio in December and get a FREE Sponsored Membership on COLOURlovers as a thank you (a $20 value).

Just email us with your Order Number for ColorSchemer Studio and your COLOURlovers username and we'll upgrade your account. (Already a Sponsored Member? We'll give you a gift credit to use next year or give away.)

Licenses/Upgrades

ColorSchemer Studio 2 remains $49.99 per license, and discounted upgrade licenses are also available for registered users of ColorSchemer Studio v1.x for $29.99.

» Purchase a license
» Upgrade your license
» More info

Also, if you purchased ColorSchemer Studio v1.x after Oct 1, 2009, you are entitled to a free upgrade to ColorSchemer Studio 2. Visit the myColorSchemer section and enter your Order Number to upgrade your license key.

As Always... You Can Make it Better

This isn't just a product to sell you... this is a product for us to grow together. We've always taken special care to only work with quality products and never compromise the wonderful community and culture we have here. The partnership with ColorSchemer is brand new, so we've only had a little amount of time to work on integrating our services. We plan on bringing the best of both worlds together in the future and you can help us with that.
-What would you like to see ColorSchemer include from COPASO?
-What would you like to see COLOURlovers bring online from ColorSchemer?
Aaron is now a part of the COLOURlovers family, so welcome him and and let him know how he can help you share the love.

+D

This is a guest post by Martin Petrov (a.k.a aeonbeat).

The movie (Sunshine) itself is not that interesting, but the camera work and choice of colors in every single scene is really joyful. You can notice, for example, how a crew member's t-shirt and an object on the table are the same color, while at the same time everything else is merging to form a background. I don't see any specific symbolic meaning behind that, and it's nothing new for sure, but still, it's inspiring for people who love colors.

Art

Anders Oinonen

Portfolio

I have covered black & gold and now it is time for white & gold. These two make for a pretty interesting pairing. As far as white is concerned, it's associated with purity and tranquility. And gold is seen as rich, classy and sophisticated, so using the two blended together in home decor is pretty interesting.

While browsing a variety of sites I have come across some nice looking items, which I hope you enjoy.

pillow, plate, lamp, vase, pouf, candle, tray

To all the food that didn't get eaten the first time around: colors, palettes and patterns inspired by leftovers.

Palettes

Dick Bruna is best known for his children's books which he authored and illustrated, now numbering over 200. His best known creation is Miffy (Nijntje in the original Dutch), a small rabbit drawn with heavy graphic lines, simple shapes and primary colors.

Aside from his prolific catalog of children's books, Bruna also illustrated and designed book covers, posters and promotional materials for his father's publishing company A.W. Bruna and Zoon. His most popular designs graced the covers of the Zwarte Beertjes series of books.

Children's Books

Miffy is a small female rabbit in a series of picture books drawn and written by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. Her original Dutch name is Nijntje [nɛɪ̯ncǝ] which stems from a toddler's pronunciation of the word "konijntje" meaning "little rabbit".

The first Miffy book was produced in 1955, and almost 30 others have followed. In total they have sold over 85 million copies, and inspired a television series as well as items such as clothes and toys featuring the character.

I know we had a colorful look at waves not too long ago (see it here), but when I came across the shorebreak photography of Clark Little I couldn't resist sharing the incredible palettes created by a mix of sand, shore and water.  All of these photos can be seen on his site, and are part of his latest book, The Shorebreak Art of Clark Little.

With a large percentage of wine consumers uniformed about the extraordinary number of producers and varieties of wine, an attractive color palette can be quite appealing and highly influential on consumers.

Here's a selection of recent wine labels and their recurring color trends and design themes.

Complex Palettes