Alright, let me tell you what I worked on today. I’ve been seeing these absolutely stunning pictures of the aurora australis, the southern lights, you know? The colors are just unreal, totally blew me away. I got this idea that I really wanted to capture those colors somehow, maybe use them for a little design project I’ve got kicking around in my head.
Getting the Vibe Down
So, first thing I did was just browse around online, looking for photos that really nailed the look. Not just any photos, but ones where the greens and pinks and purples really sang. Found a handful that felt right, the ones that had that kind of eerie, beautiful glow against the dark sky. I saved a few of my favorites to my computer.
Then came the part where I actually tried to pull the colors out. I opened up the pictures in some basic image viewing software I have, nothing fancy. I just started using the little eyedropper tool, you know the one? I just clicked on parts of the picture that had the colors I liked. I aimed for a mix:
- A couple of those vibrant, almost neon greens.
- That soft, sometimes intense, pinky-purple color that often shows up.
- Maybe a deeper purple or a dark blue from the edge where the lights fade into the night.
- And a really dark, near-black color for the sky itself, for contrast.
It wasn’t super scientific. I just grabbed colors that looked good to me, the ones that screamed “aurora”.
Making the Palette Usable
Okay, so I had a bunch of color swatches sitting there in my image program. Some looked great, a couple felt a bit off when I put them next to each other. Like, one green was too yellowish, didn’t quite fit the vibe. So I tweaked them slightly. Played around with the brightness on one, maybe made another a little less saturated. Just nudged them around until they felt like a cohesive set, like they belonged together.
Once I was happy with the set, maybe five or six core colors, I needed a way to save them so I could easily use them later. I didn’t want to have to eyedropper them from the image every single time. So, I just opened up a plain old text editor. Notepad, basically. For each color I liked, I grabbed its hex code – you know, that # symbol followed by six letters and numbers that represents the color digitally. I just listed them out in the file, maybe added a quick note next to each one like “bright green” or “deep purple”.
Like this, super simple:
#12AB34 – vibrant green
#C456D7 – main pink/purple
#783F9E – deep purple
#0B1A3D – dark sky blue
#E0F0FF – pale highlight (sometimes you see this)
#05080F – near black
(These aren’t the exact codes I ended up with, just showing the idea).
All Done!
And that was pretty much it! Took a little bit of fiddling, but now I have this simple text file saved on my computer. My own little ‘aurora australis’ color palette file. It’s super handy because I can just open the file, copy a code, and paste it into whatever program I’m using when I want that specific color. Pretty pleased with how it turned out. Now I’m thinking about where I can actually use these colors first.
