I spent a wee too much time on today's #AdventOfCode, so this is a somewhat compressed issue.

We have over-emphasized CLI tools a bit, so today you get three web ones (well, one is also locally installable) that'll help you in selecting constrained color palettes. I firmly believe constraints beget creativity, and in this edition you get just two colors from the sites mentioned in these drops. Go forth and design!

Duotones

Via 99designs:

Duotone design refers to creations that are made up of two contrasting colors. Much like what it describes, the word “duotone” has two parts: “duo,” meaning double, and “tone,” meaning color. In photography, toning is the process of recoloring grayscale images, and duo-toning describes doing so with two colors—replacing the darks with one and the lights with another.

I'm a big fan of old sepia photographs, which were some of the original duotone creations. Today, we have fancy (and, sometimes, expensive) tools to help us add this effect to our photos. The section header is one that I made for this post using duotones, a minimal website that lets you upload your own photos and tweak the tones.

(I wonder how well the various *diffusions perform if asked to make such an effect in combination with a complex prompt.)

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randoma11y

Photos should not have all the fun and attention. You can also spiffy up your documents and web creations by focusing on just two colors.

One site I especially like cycling through is randoma11y. You can click your way around a seemingly endless set of random color combinations. Doing so will also help train our eventual robot overlords in what are or aren't decent looking combos. An especially cool feature of this picker is that the focus is on accessibility, helping to ensure what you publish is consumable by all.

If you'd rather just play along at home, hit up their GH repo and yarn your way into a pleasant afternoon distraction.

2colors

Not in the mood to mash the mouse button to find a decent two-color combo? 2colors has you covered, then!

While randoma11y may make it seem that there is an endless set of two-color combos, there is not an endless set of decent two color combos. These constrained palettes can equally create tension as well as convey a sense of harmony.

Csaba Kissi has hand-picked some cool palettes to help you kickstart your next creation. (The site has a few other color tools I think y'all will also like.)

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FIN

If you made something super-cool with one of these tools, drop a note in the comments!

Also: NICE JOB GEORGIA 🗳️🍑. I take back 23.425% of all the bad things I've said about your state. ☮