Finding a Palate

I have several books of color palates lying around, and occasionally I'll flip through them for inspiration. Color sets a tone as much as layout and images that are used in a design, and this is one of the things that always takes the most time for me in building a layout. There are a couple ways I get started, one is to pick a single color as a base that I love, and build a monochrome scheme by changing the opacity on the color. usually dropping it in 25% increments and adding an additional one at about 10% to use as a fill for borders on images and such.

The other way, which for me takes more time, but gets some interesting results is to start with an image that I like and use the eyedropper tool to pull individual colors out of the picture. Mixing and matching this way can get some nice combinations. Don't always go for main colors in an image, pull from the highlighted and shaded areas as well for more diversity.