Since its debut in 2008, Google Chrome has made a name for itself by offering one of the quickest speeds on the market, along with a rich array of handy plug-in options that make working with the web so much easier. There are so many great Google Chrome apps out there—especially for those working in the arts. Now, we’ve rounded up our top 10 best chrome apps for artists. Time to get downloading!
ColorZilla
ColorZilla is a Google Chrome app that allows graphic designers and web developers to analyze any color they see online using a simple eyedropper tool. The ability to zoom up to 1000% means that there is guaranteed accuracy when picking a color. Once the color is selected, ColorZilla allows you to paste the color directly into your design program so you can get right to creating. This Chrome app also has a Webpage DOM Color Analyzer that allows you to discover which color schemes are being used on any given website with the click of a button. This is a great way for designers to garner inspiration!
WhatFont
WhatFont is a straightforward but effective Chrome web store app that can identify the fonts used on any given website in a pinch. All you have to do is turn on the plug-in and then hover over the font you want to ID. A small box with the font’s name will appear. The app doesn’t do anything more than this, but it doesn’t need to. Its beauty is in its simplicity, which has been praised by the likes of Wired.
Muzli 2
Its name may evoke visions of breakfast food, but bear with us when we say that comparison isn’t super far off. Think of Muzli 2 as starter fuel for a designer’s brain. This Google Chrome app works as an inspiration machine that shows you relevant design projects, photographs, art, and websites daily, all curated to your personal taste. Muzli 2 uses a highly tuned algorithm and a team of real-life experts to bring you content that otherwise would be missed through a simple Google search. A perfect way for any designer to start their day and start dreaming of projects, cup of coffee in hand.
Evernote
It’s no secret that it can be hard for many of us to stay organized. Not only are there several projects floating around in the mind of any creative’s head at any given point, but there is often little time to actually sit down and organize these potential projects. That’s where the amazing Google Chrome app Evernote comes in. Evernote is a multipurpose note-taking app that molds to your organizational style, turning chaos into structure. Evernote allows you to collect written notes, photos, websites, images, logos, PDFs, and more—it’s the to-do list of the future! If you have a logo associated with your business branding, you can keep it on hand in Evernote to quickly drag and drop it across projects. Evernote makes collaboration easy by allowing you to share your notes among users (and it’s usable across different devices, too).
Google Arts and Culture
Remember when everyone was posting those Google Arts and Culture side-by-side pics matching their selfies to famous works of art? Google Arts and Culture also has a Chrome app that shares the same lofty purpose: to share art with the world. With the Google Arts and Culture extension, every tab that you open displays a different work of art chosen from the Google art database. This is a great way to get your daily dose of inspiration—without having to change anything about your browsing habits.
Spectrum
Did you know that as many as 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women in the world are affected by color vision deficiency? Color vision deficiency—often referred to as color blindness—can affect the way people see certain hues, particularly reds and greens. It’s obvious why this may be a concern for graphic designers (especially for those who use color to convey data in charts and graphs). This Chrome web store app allows designers to see what their websites look like for people with different types of color vision deficiency, so you can make sure your design is inclusive to a broad audience.
Google Font Previewer
Not sure which font will look best in your upcoming project? Why not test-drive a bunch? The Google Font Previewer is a Chrome app that allows you to choose any font from the Google library and apply it to an entire page for preview purposes. It’s especially handy when you are in the preliminary stages of designing a website and want to see which works well with your brand identity.
Pablo
Have you ever shared an amazing infographic or pristine landscape photo to your Facebook or Instagram account, only to realize that the most important elements of the image has been cut out by the site’s built-in size restrictions? With this Google Chrome app, you can choose from perfectly-sized templates for all kinds of social media accounts, so you know that the photo you are about to share is optimized for that platform. All it takes to use Pablo is a simple right-click on any photo. (Want more tools like this? Here’s a few of the best online photo editors!)
Toby
Did we mention already that artists are busy people? When you’re diving into a new project, chances are, inspiration doesn’t hit you all at once. It’s more likely that your inspo grows over time—and then manifests itself in the physical world as a terrifying neverending line of tabs. This is where Toby comes in! Toby’s organization wizardry makes it one of the best Chrome apps out there. It takes the mess of tabs that you have opened in your browser and organizes them into a neat collection of links for you to peruse at your leisure. Not only is having multiple tabs open intimidating and distracting, it can also be counterproductive as so often tabs are ignored or forgotten. With one click, you can organize your open tabs into collections that you can later revisit from any desktop.
Looking for more ways to boost your creativity?
The Apps Artists Use To Boost Creativity and Get Work Done
The 10 Best Online Graphic Design Software Programs
The 11 Best Free Online Photo Editors
11 Extremely Helpful (And Free!) Online Graphic Design Courses
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