Color Lab Version 1.0

There are a lot of beautiful skins and clothing in Second Life created by artists all over the world. The problem with this diversity of looks and styles is bringing it all together. Clothing and colors that complement your real life skin tone may not combine as nicely with your favorite second life skins. This is a project I've worked on and off again for the past 2 years. For older avatars, I hope it can help get some new life out of old hairstyle and wardrobe items. For younger avatars, I hope it can prevent someone from paying $500 for an outfit that would look much better in a different color.

A quick warning: this toolkit has a lot of files. In order to keep it from dumping all those files into your inventory at once, the contents have been broken into four containers. The Palette box has a little over 100 shirt layer clothing items to help you find clothing colors that complement your skin's tone. The Attachment box has a prim bow with a color change menu with instructions on the box. The Corrector box has 16 tattoos to tweak the tone of your skin to complement your clothing. The Soul Windows box has 25 eyes that you can use to "accessorize" your outfits.

The clothing items in the "Palette" and "Attachment" boxes are organized by simple "seasonal" color palettes. The items are designed to let you experiment with combining layer (and prim) clothing colors to work with your skin tone, eye color, and hair colors. If you're designing your own outfits, the hex value in the file name can be used image editing applications In-world, the prim scarf can be clicked with the eyedropper tool to easily apply that color in the "Texture" window. If you're buying clothes, the "Palette" items will give you a better idea of what colors will look best, and what colors will be collecting virtual dust in your inventory.

The "Corrector" box contains tattoos that shift the skin color to match clothing colors better. Anyone who's drastically changed their avatar's appearance knows that clothing items that looked great with the old avatar may not look as nice on the new version. The tone correctors are a quick and dirty method to force your skin to play nice with certain hair colors and clothing items, or to "de-orange" an existing skin. Find a tone corrector that works best, and preferably looks natural, and tuck a copy of it in the outfit folder.

The "Soul Windows" box contains a collection of eyes you can use to experiment with to put a nice finishing touch on an outfit. If a certain outfit isn't bringing out the color in your eyes, in SL you always have the option of changing your eye color.

Have fun

If you have any thoughts on tools or items you'd like to see in a second collection, or unique approaches to using these tools you'd like to pass along for this collection, let me know. (Notecards for in-world correspondence, preferably.)

Select Color Lab products are available at Westwood Corner in Sexy Bay (Adult), and at the Kumamoto free market in the Kumamoto sim (PG).

Special thanks to Nemi Nagy's "Color Namer/Converter HUD" for approximating color names and converting to hex based on the RGB values.