Colors are widely used and they have different meanings all over the world. The human eye can distinguish roughly 10 million different colors. However, 16 million is an estimate of how many different colors a 24 bit RGB computer monitor can simulate. I found some useful color related tools which are very helpful when you have to create designs and mood boards or just for fun.
The first one is Kuler. This website, from Adobe, makes is possible to generate and browse inspiring color themes. You can do that by picking your own colors from the spectrum and by uploading a photo where Kuler generates the colors from.
A similar one is Colorsuckr , where you can also get color schemes from a picture, but this one is a lot more extended. For example, here you can see colorschemes where the colors from you picture are related to.
When you have to create a mood board with specific colors Multicolr Search Lab is a good tool to use. You can select some colors and it will search through the pictures in Flickr that contain the colors.
The last one is 0to255, a tool which helps you to find lighter and darker colors based on any color. This works by filling in a color-code and the tool generates the different shades form that color. When you found the one you need the color-code is copied easily.
Just take a look, and try some of them!
