So often, the things that I try to help others with turns into an entire conversation about color. Whether it’s trying to help someone understand the importance of a color palette in web design, or trying to help a friend repaint her home, I always come back to the whole concept of color psychology and itch to be able to just “show” how color harmonies work.
If I’m going to “show” how they work, a true color wheel is the tool to use. Have you tried pricing them, though? They’re ridiculously pricey. Bazzil Basics Paper has created some that had me absolutely aching to create something similar.
So I did.
This guide will lead you through the creation of true, printable color wheels using Photoshop. The colors we’ll work with are a monochromatic scale, but you can use any color scheme on your own wheels. All that you need is a copy of Photoshop (version 7 through the current CS3); I’m using CS3 in this guide, so some tools may be located slightly differently in older versions.
Make a Printable Color Wheel – The Steps
1. New Canvas: First, create a new canvas in Photoshop (File, New) that is sized about 7 inches by 7 inches, in RGB mode, with a white background.
2. Make 3 Circles: We’ll want 3 circles to make the layout of our wheel a bit easier. The first circle is going to be large – use your shape tool (NOT your marquee tool) and hold down the Shift key on your keyboard while you draw the circle out to keep it shaped as a perfect circle. It has to fit inside the square of our canvas, but other than that it needs to be as large as the canvas will allow.
When the first circle is drawn, right-click its layer and choose “Rasterize Layer”. Then, right-click it and choose “Duplicate Layer” twice (so that you have 2 copies of the circle layer).
Use your magic wand tool to select one of the copy circles. Click “Select”, choose “Modify”, choose “Contract”, and enter “20”. Then, go right back to “Select” and choose “Inverse”. Hit the backspace key on your keyboard to remove the outer portion of your circle. Repeat this for the other copy circle. (Reference Illustration 01).
3. Set Colors: The basic setup of our color wheel is now made – we just need to set the colors of each circle to make it easier to identify each piece.
The first circle – the largest one – is simply the background. It needs to be white with a 1-pixel black stroke around it. Go to “Layer” and choose “Layer Styles” to apply a white Color Overlay and a black Stroke.
The second circle – the one in the middle on the layer palette – can be any color. This is the circle we’ll use to make our color schemes on.
The third circle – the top one in the layer palette – needs to be a light cream color. This circle will serve as the “window” on our color wheel. The cream color I’ve used is #ece4d9
4. Start the Palette: We’re going to create one basic palette in white, that we can duplicate and use the color overlay setting on to create the rest of the palettes.
First, create a new layer (Layer, New, Layer). Then, grab your polygonal lasso tool. Make the top circle invisible, so that you can easily see the palette layer. Now, draw a long triangle shape on your new layer, and fill it with white – this is a lot like slicing a pie. (Reference Illustration 01).
Now, we want to make the slice match the inner circle’s edges and be cut into 3 sections that we can overlay with color. Let’s start by making it match edges. Click once on your inner circle’s layer to select it. Then, use your magic wand to select everything outside the inner circle. Now, go back to your slice layer. Hit the backspace key on your keyboard, and the edges will match right up.
Let’s make the sections of our pie slice. We want it to be cut evenly in 3 pieces. Use your circle marquee tool to echo the top curve of the slice, and select the bottom 2/3 of your slice. Click “Layer”, choose “New”, and click “Layer via Cut”. Repeat this once more for three individual sections of the slice.
Finally, duplicate these three layers and move them around your circle to make a full “wheel”. Just leave space between each section for the wheel’s operation, and leave one small space for text. (Reference Illustration 01).
5. Make Colors: This step will take a little bit of time, but should be a lot of fun. All that you do here is start filling your sections with colors. Each slice represents a color harmony, so the sections of that slice are different colors but part of the same palette. Go around the entire wheel using the Color Overlay layer style (Layer, Layer Style) to set up your colors. (Reference Illustration 02).
When you’ve laid out your colors, clean up the center of the wheel by doing a small white circle over the sections.
6. Make a Window: This is our last design step (although there’s thousands of little things you can play around with to make your wheel unique). We’re going to create 3 separate “windows” that will be cut out of the top circle so that when the wheel is turned, different colors show up.
Use your polygonal lasso tool to create another slice – use your color pie slices as a guide, making the lasso selection cut right inside the lines of your slices.
Select your top circle layer, and hit the backspace key on your keyboard to remove the color from that slice. Repeat twice more, making 3 windows. (Reference Illustration 03).
All that’s left is to print and assemble your color wheel. When you print, make sure to print the top circle separately from the rest of the wheel – it has to be on two separate pieces of paper. Speaking of paper, use a quality card stock to print on, and set your printer to “Best” quality settings. Cut out carefully and use a metal brad in the center of the wheel to let it rotate.
The things you can do with a wheel like this are endless – from promo materials to wheels that you use in your own work constantly to scrapbooking. Decorate them in Photoshop or with your own hand to make them stand out.
