Two Great Sites for Web Designers

Two big challenges I face when designing a new web site are the color scheme and the accompanying images.  For color schemes, I often save a link to sites that I can rip off inspire me, but who wants their site to look exactly like another?  For images, stock photo sites like Corbis, Alamy, and Mira have stunning collections, but the licensing can be very expensive.

The interface needs work, but Colr.org is a site that does a couple of things to help you with color schemes.  It scopes color schemes from photos, and it allows visitors to add "tags" or labels to web colors.  With today's displays, unless you're designing for Google or Amazon, you can be bold and throw "web safe" colors out the window!

Colr.org pointed to me to another great site - Freefoto.com.  It's the largest collection of free photographs for private non-commercial use on the Internet, and prices start at $30 for commercial use.  Finally there's a place you can grab pics while designing, knowing that the ones you keep won’t break the bank.  Hats off to the photographer, Ian Britton (who by the way supplied the thumbnail pic for this post).