Adobe ripped off a blogger to create Kuler?

Filed under Web Design by Chad | 4 comments


I wasn’t aware of this until I saw it on Digg today. This is pretty crappy if true. I use Kuler pretty frequently on my projects during the design phase, just for inspiration, ideas, etc… Seems it’s pretty much a copy of ColourLovers.com.

It turns out the basis of the sites are about the same, the pallette used in the sites’ designs are about the same and according to the owner of the ColourLover sit (a bit tongue in cheek), both have “Color Spelled with a ‚ÄúU‚Äù.

What do you think? Is it just a case of copying being a sincere form of flattery? Or is  it not giving credit where credit is due?

Posted on July 7, 2007


4 comments

  1. John Dowdell Jul 7

    Did you read the comments there…? ;-)

    jd/adobe

  2. John Jul 7

    Here’s a problem I have with both Kuler and Colourlovers, the perception of color is influenced by the background that they are placed on. Kuler forces black on you, and Colourlovers uses white/off-white.

    Tip to either Adobe or Colourlovers: allow the user to change the bkgd color that the palette sits on.

  3. Josh Chernoff Jul 7

    I don’t feel that adobe ripped any thing off. I think if any thing they had the same idea then adobe came after colourlovers. adobe probably would have made a even more closser copy of colourlovers if they hadn’t seen colourlover. I bet by the acknolagment of colourlovers adobe try even harder to provide a like service but in a more divers way such as in the IDE like in illustrator. Even then the same could be said for colourlovers as they provide color swatches in different adobe formats such as for photo shop.

    Keep in mind the bigger picture
    1: colourlovers is more community based. forums and blogging and a better commenting rating system
    2:Kuler is more technical and logical. Provides CMYK, LAB and RGB with color theories and a over all a better color wheel).
    3: Kuler is more API friendly with a great deal of redevelopment emphasis.
    4: The web technologies are different. Kulers was in a way to provides a better under standing of Action Script’s capabilities as kuler surfaced just about the same time AS3 was introduced.

    I feel that adobe provided a great deal of uniqueness to kuler that it warrants it’s own place on the web. and to say that influence is robery then yahoo should sue Google and all artist of all types should stop working.

  4. Horror Jul 16

    lol… typical…

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