Agave Color Schemes

The Gnome desktop has yet one more solution for designers of users that want to generate professional color schemes almost instantly. Agave has the ability to work from a base color that you specify giving you 6 different modes including Complements, Split Complements, Triads, Tetrads, Analogous, and Monochromatic. The dropper tool allows quick access to any colors displayed on the screen and the toolbar offers icons for adjusting brightness and saturation. You can also easily copy hexadecimal color codes into a clipboard and save a list of favorite hex codes. Agave comes in several languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Czech, and Bulgarian.

I was able to install Agave very easily using

apt-get install agave

or

yum install agave

Depending if I was on my Ubuntu system or Fedora.

After installation I navigated to the graphics portion of my menu and opened the program for the first time. Across the top we can see a menu with File --- Edit --- Favorites ---Help. Below the top menu is a toolbar with descriptive icons for navigation, randomizing colors, changing brightness and saturation of colors.

Below the toolbar we can clearly see the three large blocks of color in the center of the Agave window. Hexidecimal color codes are included within the blocks and the primary color, left by default, can be changed by double clicking another color or changing the color of the small color palette located underneath the primary color.

Directly to the right of the small primary color selector icon appears a bar that says "triads" by default. This is the mode or method of displaying the color scheme. At times you may choose another one of these options depending on your needs. Another popular mode in "compliments" which displays a complementary color or in other words the best match for the color you selected.

To the right side we can see the favorites menu which is a clipboard for storing hexadecimal color codes for future use. Agave has taken this scheme saving technique one step further by enabling users to export hex code from the favorites list. The icons to add, remove and clear the clipboard are at the bottom of the playlists part of the window.

A color palette appears at the bottom so we can find relevant colors. Clicking on it will minimize the palette part of the window. And finally below the palette we can select our type of palette.

Now that we've identified where everything is lets take a look at some of the features that have gotten the Agave application where it is today. Agave offers six different types of color schemes first of all. You can select complements,split complements, triads, tetrads, analogous, and monochromati. Each of these color schemes provides different color styles for different color scheme uses. Sometimes users need different combinations of two, three, or four color schemes. Another popualr feature is that Agave has a eyedropper that users can use anywhere on the scree. the advantage of this is if i'm working on a project and need to match a color i'm already using, it's just a few clicks to do it. Color scheme Lightness and Saturation properties can be changed from the agave toolbar quickly and easily. Users can easily copy color codes for use in HTML, CSS or elsewhere. Agave also features a favorites list whith users preferred colors. Choose "web safe" palette or others, drag and drop to GIMP, and generate random color schemes with Agave which is available in several languages.

 As a web designer, it's no wonder the Agave color scheme generator is one of the first Gnome applications I add to my Ubuntu desktop.