Check ’em out here. According to the product team, enhancements include the following:

1. Extract color themes from an image: The original Kuler web app included the ability to extract a theme from an image. That feature is back. Just click the camera icon in the upper right corner of the Create page and choose a photofrom your library.
2. A color wheel in two sizes: When we updated the interface many of our long-term users thought we’d made the color wheel too large. Now, with a click, the wheel can be larger when you need it and smaller when you don’t.
3. Reduced borders around individual colors in a theme: Now you can see more of each color and the play and interaction between them.

Check it out:

The new Kuler iPhone app allows you to capture inspiring color themes anytime, using the iPhone camera. You can then sync those color themes to the Kuler website, which allows you to create and edit color themes and browse thousands of themes created by other users. All the themes you create with Kuler will be accessible in Adobe Illustrator CC and Ideas.

The Kuler Web app has also been redone in HTML5.

If you have any feedback or questions, we want to hear from you. Please join the conversation on the Kuler forum.

Update: Here’s a quick demo:

[Via]

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned SwitchBoard, a Flex library that lets Adobe AIR desktop apps communicate with Creative Suite applications.  Now there’s a new version of the AIR-based kuler desktop app that can send color swatches to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.  Here’s an annotated screenshot.  To take it for a spin, first download SwitchBoard, then install kuler desktop (linked from the right-hand nav area of kuler.adobe.com). [Update: Here’s the direct link.]

Adobe kuler (the rich Internet application for color exploration and sharing, in case you’ve been chilling under a rock) now features some cool integration with Flickr, creating color harmonies from images.  To try it, click the "Create" button at left, then choose "From an Image."  Next to the button that lets you upload your own shots, you’ll see a Flickr button that lets you browse and search images that you & others have shared.  (Here’s a screenshot.)  Foxy. 

Other new tweaks debut today on kuler as well:

• Time-based theme browsing (last 7 days, last 30 days, all days), to surface more user-generated content
• Theme details now includes a More Info view, where you can choose your avatar and find the theme’s direct link (for blog links, or to email or IM, etc.)

A new version of kuler, Adobe’s popular rich Internet application for color exploration and sharing, has just launched.  New features:

• Use color extraction to quickly and automatically generate a color theme from any uploaded photo or other image. Explore different moods, such as bright or muted, to see different colors, or drag the markers to select colors. [Hit "Create" over in the left-hand navigation, then select "From an Image" at upper-left.]
• Endless favorites: Now save as many themes as you like, and browse them in your Mykuler area
• Browse by Random (randomly selected) themes, in addition to Highest Rated, Newest, and Most Popular

Enjoy! [Via Sami Iwata]

The crew behind Adobe’s kuler color harmony RIA has released a new version of the desktop color feed browser (screenshot).  You can check it out by installing Adobe AIR, then downloading the app.  New features include:

• Browse color themes from the kuler website while offline (up to 100 themes cached per feed)
• Drag and drop themes onto your own desktop as transparent "tear offs," which can be scaled and viewed over any application
• Access themes from Mykuler (must be signed in)
• Download themes as ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) files directly from the kuler desktop (must be signed in)
• Browse the new RSS feed "Random"

Here’s the full feature list (PDF) in case you want all the details. [Via Sami Iwata]

Completely tangential but involving colors: Art Lebedev’s Optimus Tactus keyboard concept. [Via Scott Valentine]

Joining a long list of apps integrated with Adobe’s kuler color harmony site, Photoshop & other Mac apps now get in on the game thanks to Lithoglyph’s CocoaKuler Mondrianum*.  The tool gives the Apple color picker the ability to browse kuler’s color harmony feeds, displaying the results in a slick Cover Flow view; here’s a screenshot.  To access the picker from within Photoshop, go into preferences and select the Apple (rather than Adobe) color picker.  Mucho groovio! [Via Lydia Varmazis]

*The name is a bit of a misnomer [name now updated], as Photoshop is Carbon-based (as are Final Cut Pro, iTunes, Office, etc.).

Every time I’ve demonstrated Illustrator CS3’s excellent Live Color feature, the first question I hear is predictable: "Great, but when can I have that in Photoshop? [Or in Flash, or InDesign, or…]"  Selecting harmonious colors is a necessary part of just about every design discipline.

Adobe’s kuler online application offers a subset of Live Color in a Web-hosted, Flash-powered environment.  It offers powerful tools for creating color harmonies, plus tools for saving color sets & sharing those with others.  As noted recently, feeds of these colors can be sucked into other apps.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I want to make it possible to extend Photoshop (and all Adobe apps, for that matter) by dropping in Flash-based palettes/panels.  So, here’s a thought: what if we gave Photoshop (and maybe other Suite apps) the ability to use kuler to create and modify color harmonies, and to upload/download color sets to share with others?

Here’s a really simple mockup I created to show how it might work.  You’d be able to use the color wheel to create color sets based on rules (Analogous, Complementary, etc.).  Clicking on the resulting colors would let you paint with them in Photoshop, and/or save them as color swatches.  You’d also be able to view, search, and use harmonies created by others & shared via kuler.

What do you think?  I created a two-question survey to gauge your response.  Comments are also welcome. [Update: The survey is open again. I didn’t realize that Survey Monkey had a 100-response limit on their free account. Clever, clever…]

Thanks,
J.

And the hits keep on coming… File this one under "Eine kleine Bildschirmschoner": a German-speaking developer has created a simple but attractive Mac screensaver (same page auto-translated) that sucks in a feed of popular harmonies on Adobe kuler.  Gut! [Via]

Elsewhere in the world of cool screensavers, groundbreaking Flash coder Yugo Nakamura has created Kaze to Desktop, a Windows "screensaver which moves according to the current wind (=kaze) conditions of your city."  Check out the video to see some super-smooth action. (The scattered piles of Windows chrome remind me of the "crash board" Mordy Golding spotted on a client visit.)

As you may know, kuler is Adobe’s rich Internet app (RIA) for creating & sharing color harmonies.  About a month ago the kuler team unveiled an API that enables other applications to suck in feeds of the most popular, most recent, and highest rated harmonies found on the site.

Now Microsoft engineer Saveen Reddy has used the API to enable drawing kuler colors in Visio.  Not having a copy of Visio, I can’t give this a spin, but the integration should make it easy to apply popular color themes to your artwork.  Very cool.  [Previously: It’s also possible to pull kuler feeds onto your desktop or into Dashboard, and to use them inside the Flash authoring environment.  Update: A free script lets you use .ASE swatch files in After Effects, making it possible to pull in kuler harmonies.]

In other kuler news, PM Sami Iwata reports that they’re running a “theme drive” to collect autumn-inspired themes.  She writes,

kuler members can submit themes around the autumn season and also “vote” for
themes by rating and downloading them. At the end of the drive, the
kuler team will select a few of the highest rated and most popular
autumn themes to appear on a kuler t-shirt. If your theme is selected,
you will get 6 kuler t-shirts with your theme on it.

Hustle up, though: the theme drive runs from now until this Friday at 5:00 PDT.  More details are here.

I’m pleased to report that kuler, Adobe’s Web-hosted application for exploring, creating and sharing color harmonies, can now be accessed from your desktop via Adobe’s Apollo technology. After a sneak peek at the CS3 launch event, the "kuler desktop" is now available for download on Adobe Labs, along with the required Apollo Runtime environment.
 
The kuler desktop offers the same RSS feed functionality as the kuler Dashboard widget but with a new form factor (see quick clip of it in action). Users can view RSS feeds of the highest rated, most popular, and newest themes from the kuler site, search the thousands of titled and tagged themes, search by kuler user name, and copy theme hex values to the clipboard.

For other cool Apollo bits, check out the technology showcase on Labs.

Note: By default, kuler installed itself on my Mac using my user Applications directory, rather than in the root Applications directory that I normally use.  This isn’t a big deal, and you can easily change the install location, but I mention it in case you find yourself wondering where the app has been installed.

The folks behind kuler, Adobe’s color-centric rich internet app, are a quietly busy bunch.  Tonight they’ve posted a widget for OS X’s Dashboard (download — 200kb; screenshot).  According to kuler community PM Sami Iwata,
the widget "displays RSS feeds of color themes from kuler… Browse the newest, highest rated, and most popular color themes; search for themes on the kuler site by tag, title, or creator ID; copy hex values from any theme to your clipboard."

Knowing this group, they’ll keep cranking out good stuff.  In the meantime, if you have feedback on the widget, please let the team know via the kuler user forum.

The folks behind kuler, Adobe’s color-centric rich internet app, are a quietly busy bunch.  Tonight they’ve posted a widget for OS X’s Dashboard (download — 200kb; screenshot).  According to kuler community PM Sami Iwata,
the widget "displays RSS feeds of color themes from kuler… Browse the newest, highest rated, and most popular color themes; search for themes on the kuler site by tag, title, or creator ID; copy hex values from any theme to your clipboard."

Knowing this group, they’ll keep cranking out good stuff.  In the meantime, if you have feedback on the widget, please let the team know via the kuler user forum.