… as opposed to my remedial colored-pencil approach to trying different colors on the exterior of our house? Of course there are other ways. There are a number of software choices out there, but not all of them are good and they’re not all designed for the basic homeowner.
The one that seemed to have the best reviews was Benjamin Moore’s Personal Color Viewer (PCV3), available for Mac or PC….
At $10, it seemed like something worth trying, so I did. It’s Adobe-based software so it’s not particularly stupid-proof if you’re new to Adobe. Out of curiosity, I tried it out a couple of different ways.
First, I uploaded an architectural rendering and played with that…
Hard to tell what’s going on by looking at a rendering, it turns out.
So then I uploaded a photo and played with that, too. Here’s one somewhat sloppy example…
The software comes loaded with BM’s color palettes, but it’s laborious to experiment with colors — I tried to find the right gold-green but it literally takes FOREVER to change what you’ve done. The navigation is horrendous. I say this as someone who’s in the business of helping to make things online more user friendly.
I do like being able to see what colors on the exterior look like in the context of the houses around ours. But overall, I think my results were hardly worth the time I had to spend trying to compare different shades on the areas I masked out.
Bottom line on the Personal Color Viewer: If you have hours and hours to waste, go for it.
If you’re in a hurry, whip out the colored pencils.
Tags: color, gadget, paint and stain, remodel