Marc's post about Behr Paint's wonderful Lazlo-based color picker application reminded me that I needed a color picker myself so I went shopping for one this afternoon.

I have a healthy respect for the power of colors but my color-sense is one-directional: I can go from colors to judgement but not the other way.  That is, I can't say “I want some nice professional set of colors for these set of web pages” and then come up with one.  Thankfully, there are programs to help me.  Most of them are appropriately priced pathetic sharewares, but I found a couple that looked good: ColorImpact 2 and Color Wheel Pro 2.

After trying both, I found Color Wheel Pro 2 to be the better of the two.  Lucky for me, it even costs less than the other one.  Nice.

Update:

Found another nice website that explains colors in a pleasant way: handprint.