ColorSight for iPhone

ColorSight by Ryan Lons is an easy to use iPhone app for identifying colors and creating color palettes on the go from photos already in your camera or from photos you snap from within the app. Send your colors via email with images and details on each color including RGB and CMYK values.

When you first open ColorSight it's pre-loaded with a sample palette. Actually, ColorSight calls them swatches. I found the terminology slightly confusing at first. To me, a swatch is a single color square while a palette is a collection of color swatches. But whatever you call them, it's easy to create and save a new set of colors.

You can create your swatch (palette) by picking colors from a photo (from your Camera Roll or a photo you take with your iPhone from within the app). Load the image then move it around under the crosshairs in the app until the color you want is in the larger square in the lower left of your screen. Tap the square to add the color, move the photo and tap again for the next color you want.

You can also add a color by creating it in the app using sliders to choose a color or input specific HSB, RGB, or CMYK values, or HEX numbers. Name your swatches something meaningful to you.

Once you've created a set of colors you can drag and drop to arrange them in any order you would like -- grouping the colors makes it easier to see if you have duplicates or colors that are very close to each other. When you have more than eight colors in a swatch, dragging them from one screen to the next can get a bit tricky. I wish I could see them all on one screen together.

You can drag individual colors to the trash to eliminate duplicates or colors you've decided not to save. On the main screen that shows all your swatches you can delete entire swatches or reorder the rows of swatches.

In would be nice if there were an option to automatically arrange individual colors in a swatch by value or HEX#. Additionally, something I'd like to see in future versions would be a few quick sort options such as "Alphabetize" or "Sort by Date" for the named swatches.

There are several different screens within ColorSight and multiple ways to create, edit, and work with your colors. When you close and then reopen the app it starts up on whatever screen you were viewing when you closed it. What I call the main screen is where you view all your saved color palettes. From there you can delete them, add new ones, or add new colors to existing palettes.

While it took a few tries to figure out how to navigate some of the screens and accomplish certain tasks, I found the ? (Help) button quite useful. Tap the ? on any screen (other than the Quick Color screen) and little Help bubbles pop up all over the screen telling you briefly what each icon or screen area does and whether you need to tap or tap and hold to access a feature. This is quicker and easier for me than reading a separate Help file.

Having your colors and color info in the app is all well and good, but if you really want to use information to create graphics or Web sites you probably want it on your computer, right? You can send each set of colors to yourself (or others) via email. You can also choose how much information to send along with the colors -- RGB values, HSB values, CMYK values, HEX number.

Overall, I love this app. While I'd like to see some of the changes noted previously in this review, as it is right now it is well worth the $.99 price tag if you love colors and want an easy way to preserve and use the colors you see around you.

This app was purchased by the reviewer.