Color can be one of the most inspiring elements of human life. It’s around us at all times, and has the ability to invoke a range of emotions. A few months back I wrote a post on tools for color lovers. Well, here are a few more that have caught my attention recently.

Discover photos by color

Ok Flickr fanatics may already know of this, but I use Flickr pretty often and just discovered it. It’s an experimental color picker by Krazydad which allows you to find Flickr images by color. Clicking any color on the wheel will display random photos from the Flickr database, and clicking that photo will take you to the appropriate page for more info. Browse by a variety of tags, such as color fields or textures.

Design by color

Colorsontheweb.com has a good app for picking out and matching colors, called The Color Wizard. Drop in a base color (not unlike Kuler) and let the wizard churn out a scheme for you based on your selection of monochromatic, triadic, complimentary, etc.

Genopal offers another online app which immediately stands apart from most pickers we’re used to seeing, because it groups colors together for you, helping you select the the right palette in no time. The colors generally work well together, and the utility is a cinch to use. Give it a try.

Finally there’s ColorToy, a flash-based color schemer which will generate random palettes, or one based on a color you enter. Not much to it, but it’s fast and clearly displays all the codes for the colors it generates.

Decorate by color

Behr has an awesome tool called ColorSmart, for picking the perfect color of paint for your deco project by number/name, by color, or by “inspiration” (my favorite). You can even upload your own photos of a room for previewing. I just finished painting our guest bathroom the WRONG color of green last night (was supposed to be sage but ended up a limey olive). I wish I had remembered this utility last week when we were deciding on colors.