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Assists you to browse through color themes obtained from Adobe Kuler. Dynamically link any color property within your comp to a color of the color theme.

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Chameleon – Adobe Kuler Color Theme Browser Compatible with After Effects CS3Compatible with After Effects CS4Compatible with After Effects CS5

Version: 1.0   Sign up to be notified by email when a new version of this script is posted

Assists you to browse through color themes obtained from Adobe Kuler. Dynamically link any color property within your comp to a color of the color theme. If you select another color theme, all linked colors in your comp update automatically to the new color theme.

Features:

  • Develop your motion graphics based on some Adobe kuler color theme and once you are finished see how it looks with a different one. Simply load a new color theme and your entire composition updates automatically.
  • Do color correction based on Adobe kuler color themes by pushing highlights, midtones and shadows towards different colors of your color theme.
  • Your projects still work on machines where the script is not installed.

Tutorial:

You can watch a tutorial explaining Chameleon on aetuts+.

How does it work?

Chameleon allows you to conveniently work with color themes from Adobe kuler in 3 steps.

  1. Load color themes in After Effects either from color themes downloaded at the kuler website or via cut and paste from the kuler desktop application
  2. Apply any loaded color theme to your comp with just one click
  3. Dynamically link any color property within your comp to a color theme color. Once you load a new color theme, all linked color properties in your comp update accordingly.

Last updated October 5th, 2009
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About the author

I started compositing and working with After Effects back in 2007 as a free time activity. As a computer scientist I am used to a formal, mathematical way of thinking which allows me to push the limits of After Effects. Therefore, I started developing scripts that let people perform complex tasks via easy and intuitive interfaces.

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26 Comments

  • hola una pregunta como puedo descargar el chamaleon, tengo el kuler, pero no puedo descargar el script del chameleon, please si pudieran ayudarme please. les agradesco de ante mano. saludos desde peru.

  • What a great idea! And even better that you’ve made it work! :)

  • This is killer. Thank you so much!

  • This is great, Mathias. I just added a link to the script and the tutorial here:
    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS5822310e5111fa1a-75af62a61239623aad8-8000.html

    Remember that you can do the same whenever you post a new script or tutorial.

  • this has got to be one of the coolest ideas for a script, especially because it updates all the colors automatically. BIG UP

  • thanks~ you are cool!~~

  • Matthias,

    I just downloaded this great script. Now I don’t have to panic anymore because my colors
    match.
    This is by far a very good and solid idea.

    Tim
    Antwerp-Belgium

  • Hi Mattthias,

    ich habe jetzt eine Kleinigkeit gesponsort… aber download? nix is. :-(
    Was tun? Schickst du mir die Scripts per mail?

    Grüße

  • Sorry.. der link kamper mail… habs nciht gechekct. Danke! Hat sich erledigt :-)

    • Wenn irgendetwas mit einem Download nicht klappen sollte (falsche Mailadresse angegeben oder so), kannst du es auch einfach noch einmal “kaufen” und den Preis auf 0 setzen. Ist auch gut, falls es dir einmal verloren gehen sollte oder updates gibt.

  • Hallo Mathias,
    habe das Skript erstanden und ein kleines Problem.
    Ich habe bis vor kurzem noch mit einer englischen Version von AFX CS4 gearbeitet.
    Aus unerklärlichen Gründen hat sie die Sprache auf Deutsch umgestellt und bestimmte Expressions versteht er nicht mehr. In diesem Fall erkennt die Klasse “Effect” nicht die Methode “Color”, weil die Methode, so denke ich “Farbe” heissen muss.
    Ich kann zwar per Hand das Wort ändern, aber wenn ich die Farbe dann wechsele, muss ich es wieder verbessern.
    Weisst du wie ich die Sprache wieder umstellen kann, oder muss etwas im Skript der jeweiligen Sprachversion angepasst werden.

    Ansonsten muss ich sagen, superklasse Arbeit … und Gruss aus dem schönen Potsdam

  • ich habe gerade radikal alles aus dem Ordner zdictionaries gelöscht und kann jetzt glücklich und zufrieden wieder mit einer englischen Version arbeiten. . .
    Läuft wieder alles bestens…

    Gruss Somer

  • Thanks so much for this. It’s really helping to push my projects to the next level. I’m recommending it to friends.

  • Awesome idea of implementation. You did a great job. Thanks a lot!

  • Hi Mathias,

    Excellent idea and execution, works great.

    Here’s a thought and/or suggestion. Maybe when I learn more about scripting I will undertake this myself.

    What about a version that instead of generating a color theme layer within the comp, generated a master comp called “Color Theme Master,” put the color theme null there and linked colors to that, regardless of the comp where the color was being inserted. That way the color theme could be applied / updated project-wide. In my short time working with Chameleon I have often wished I could do this, since many times my colored layers are embedded in pre-comps, etc.

    Again, just a thought. Maybe down the line if I get better at scripting I’ll try this myself. Or maybe you as an advanced programmer already know some reasons why this approach would cause more headaches than solutions.

    Meantime, thanks for a great script and UI. Elegant and helpful.

    • Hi Declan,
      thank you for this idea! At the moment I don’t have time to implement it, but you can simply do it manually. If you link some property to a theme color, an expression for the property is generated that contains a line looking somwhat like this:
      themeColor=thisComp.layer(“Color Theme”).effect(“Theme Color 2″)(“Color”)
      If you replace the
      thisComp.layer
      by
      comp(“Comp 1″).layer
      the color theme is taken from the composition with name “Comp 1″ instead of the current comp.
      Hope that helps!
      Mathias

  • Hi Mathias

    Firstly thanks for this amazing script. My only problem at the moment is that although I input my colour swatches and am able to use them without a problem when I save my project the swatches are not saved. When I next open the project I have to re import the settings. This isn’t a huge problem but I wondered if there is a work around?

    all the best

    Richard

  • Hi,

    I’m doing a smaller script that should be close to photoshop’s swatch panel. I got really inspired by your import ASE function. As also found a bug in the ASE spec file, so I did modify your function to make sure it works around. would you like me to send me the modification ?
    I believe yours got problem with some Gray type.

    cheers,

  • nice script. definitely will come in handy.

    I have 1 request/question:

    If I open up ase files that were created for other apps like AI, they show up in the chamelon window as horizontal and the window is half the width of my cinema display. Can you please add a feature so we can define how the color swatches are displayed? Maybe can set how many colors are shown horizontally before there is a line break. It would be even more handy if we had a slider to adjust this on the fly ;)

    Thanks

    D

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