As a professional of design, I know how hard is to find good free tools. I think it's very important that the applications you use are easy to use. Most of the people don't have the time and patience to read many tutorials to understand how a program works.
Here you are 50 of the best. I hope you like them.
Color Selectors:
ColorJack, let's you select color palettes by dragging on a color wheel.
Color Palette Generator, creates a palette of colors that predominate in a pic that you choose.
Color Scheme Generator, lets you make color patterns in a visual and easy way.
Kuler, a free Adobe tool that lets you create your colors or choose the most popular and rated by the public.
Colour Lovers, choose between the most rated palettes.
Names of colors in html, Do you want to know the name of your favorite color? Here you will know the name and you'll be able to pick it for your web.
Color Blender, you choose two colors and the program gives you the intermediate ones.
Logo Makers:
Cool Text, generates awesome logos in a fast and easy way.
Logo Maker, reflects your logo like in water.
Button Generators:
Web 2.0 Badges, fun badges with the colors, fonts, shapes, that you want.
My Cool Button, easy button generator. With shade and reflection effects, and rounded borders.
Brilliant Button Maker, make those small two colors buttons that so many people like.
The Original I Love Your Image Generator, really fun and original, and you will surprise everyone.
Rounded Corner Generators:
RoundedCornr, helps to create rounded corners with gradients.
Spanky Corners, creates rounded corners through CSS, really easy.
Background Makers:
BestAnimation's Backgrounds, allows to make really amazing backgrounds.
All Free Backgrounds, you can choose a background by color, texture...
bgMaker, has a gallery of designs and you can pick a background color that you like.
Custom Games For Blogs:
Pictogame, surprise your visitors with a fun game based on your photo or someone else's. Imagine your boss, teacher, with his face full of spots, or kick'em... LOL & LOL
PlayMyGame, another game creator that allows you to have fun sending your game through email, or publishing it in your blog, website or MySpace.
Avatars:
Zwinky, enjoy creating avatars with clothes and personalized accessory. Very fun and entertaining.
Mr.Picassohead, make picassian faces and then use them in forums, profiles, etc. and surprise everyone with your artistic talent.
WhyRobbieRocks, custom avatars similar to Yahoo style.
DollzMania, they are avatars very similar to the famous Bratz dolls.
Free Scripts:
Dynamic Drive, awesome scripts for your site, from mouse pointer effects like moving stars to slide shows, scroll effects... They just give you the code, and you have only to copy and paste. DHTML and Javascript.
Hot Scripts, has any kind of scripts, from easy ones to those that require a bit more of knowledge.
The PHP Resource Index, are applications in PHP that you can include in your website.
Visitor Maps:
Frappr, gives a visitor map that also includes guestbook and hit counter.
MyGuestMap, uses Google Maps and you can integrate it with Flickr.
Public Domain Photos:
Morguefile, big size pics, organized by topics, of high quality. They are copyright free, and with very original content.
ImageAfter, all kind of pics. You can find textures, nature...
Free High Resolution Photos, very original photos that you can use freely.
Copyright Free Photos, maybe they are not too big, but they are useful and nice.
Free Fonts:
1001FreeFonts, more than 6,000 fonts classified by categories: retro, graffiti, comic, medieval...
Absolute Fonts Archive, free fonts classified by name. Remember that if you are going to use them commercially you should look the readme file.
Widgets:
Chatango, put a chat in your site with voice, emoticons, avatars, public or private...
Popuri, show how popular is your site in a widget.
Statistics:
PHPMyVisites, is a system to count your visitors with very good graphics. It has a very interesting option that is to see where your visitors click on your page more often with colors.
AWStats, a very popular statistics system.
Firefox Extensions:
Xinha Here!, if you have no idea of HTML and you need to edit something online, you can use this plugin to do it visually. You can also use it in forum posts or in your profile.
Save as Image, lets you save a website like a big image. It is useful to see your website shape and color as a whole.
Inspiration:
Fantasy Name Generator, sometimes your nicknames are already taken everywhere. If you don't know what nickname to choose, maybe this generator may help you to find fun and original names. It is useful even to choose your dog's name!!!
Instant Blog Post, if you have to publish a new post today and you don't know what to write, maybe this can help. Really fun.
Flickr Color Selectr, you choose a color and it shows you photos with these colors. Maybe this can inspire you. Great tool for a graphics designer.
Crayola Coloring Application, allows you to make drawings and print them later. For your moments of inspiration.
Optimization Tools:
Browsershots, your page's design can be a little different in other operative systems and browsers. Browsershots is a site that makes a pic of your website as it is seen in many different computers. That way you can be sure that your web has no errors and has the same aspect for all the people.
PPC Ad Center, a search engine optimization (SEO) tool. It helps you to choose keywords for your site, see the speed it loads, see your rank in search engines... Easy tools to make your web more often found by visitors.
Image Tools:
ImproveYourImages, do you have an image that needs improvement? You can do it there for free.
Gallery, a photo gallery that you can use in your website.
Ajaxload, customize a image to show while something in your web is being loaded.
Technorati Tags: tools for your website
Here you are 50 of the best. I hope you like them.
Color Selectors:
ColorJack, let's you select color palettes by dragging on a color wheel.
Color Palette Generator, creates a palette of colors that predominate in a pic that you choose.Color Scheme Generator, lets you make color patterns in a visual and easy way.
Kuler, a free Adobe tool that lets you create your colors or choose the most popular and rated by the public.
Colour Lovers, choose between the most rated palettes.
Names of colors in html, Do you want to know the name of your favorite color? Here you will know the name and you'll be able to pick it for your web.
Color Blender, you choose two colors and the program gives you the intermediate ones.
Logo Makers:
Cool Text, generates awesome logos in a fast and easy way.
Logo Maker, reflects your logo like in water.
Button Generators:
Web 2.0 Badges, fun badges with the colors, fonts, shapes, that you want.
My Cool Button, easy button generator. With shade and reflection effects, and rounded borders.
Brilliant Button Maker, make those small two colors buttons that so many people like.
The Original I Love Your Image Generator, really fun and original, and you will surprise everyone.
Rounded Corner Generators:
RoundedCornr, helps to create rounded corners with gradients.
Spanky Corners, creates rounded corners through CSS, really easy.
Background Makers:
BestAnimation's Backgrounds, allows to make really amazing backgrounds.
All Free Backgrounds, you can choose a background by color, texture...
bgMaker, has a gallery of designs and you can pick a background color that you like.
Custom Games For Blogs:
Pictogame, surprise your visitors with a fun game based on your photo or someone else's. Imagine your boss, teacher, with his face full of spots, or kick'em... LOL & LOL
PlayMyGame, another game creator that allows you to have fun sending your game through email, or publishing it in your blog, website or MySpace.
Avatars:
Zwinky, enjoy creating avatars with clothes and personalized accessory. Very fun and entertaining.
Mr.Picassohead, make picassian faces and then use them in forums, profiles, etc. and surprise everyone with your artistic talent.
WhyRobbieRocks, custom avatars similar to Yahoo style.
DollzMania, they are avatars very similar to the famous Bratz dolls.
Free Scripts:
Dynamic Drive, awesome scripts for your site, from mouse pointer effects like moving stars to slide shows, scroll effects... They just give you the code, and you have only to copy and paste. DHTML and Javascript.
Hot Scripts, has any kind of scripts, from easy ones to those that require a bit more of knowledge.
The PHP Resource Index, are applications in PHP that you can include in your website.
Visitor Maps:
Frappr, gives a visitor map that also includes guestbook and hit counter.
MyGuestMap, uses Google Maps and you can integrate it with Flickr.
Public Domain Photos:
Morguefile, big size pics, organized by topics, of high quality. They are copyright free, and with very original content.
ImageAfter, all kind of pics. You can find textures, nature...
Free High Resolution Photos, very original photos that you can use freely.
Copyright Free Photos, maybe they are not too big, but they are useful and nice.
Free Fonts:
1001FreeFonts, more than 6,000 fonts classified by categories: retro, graffiti, comic, medieval...
Absolute Fonts Archive, free fonts classified by name. Remember that if you are going to use them commercially you should look the readme file.
Widgets:
Chatango, put a chat in your site with voice, emoticons, avatars, public or private...
Popuri, show how popular is your site in a widget.
Statistics:
PHPMyVisites, is a system to count your visitors with very good graphics. It has a very interesting option that is to see where your visitors click on your page more often with colors.
AWStats, a very popular statistics system.
Firefox Extensions:
Xinha Here!, if you have no idea of HTML and you need to edit something online, you can use this plugin to do it visually. You can also use it in forum posts or in your profile.
Save as Image, lets you save a website like a big image. It is useful to see your website shape and color as a whole.
Inspiration:
Fantasy Name Generator, sometimes your nicknames are already taken everywhere. If you don't know what nickname to choose, maybe this generator may help you to find fun and original names. It is useful even to choose your dog's name!!!
Instant Blog Post, if you have to publish a new post today and you don't know what to write, maybe this can help. Really fun.
Flickr Color Selectr, you choose a color and it shows you photos with these colors. Maybe this can inspire you. Great tool for a graphics designer.
Crayola Coloring Application, allows you to make drawings and print them later. For your moments of inspiration.
Optimization Tools:
Browsershots, your page's design can be a little different in other operative systems and browsers. Browsershots is a site that makes a pic of your website as it is seen in many different computers. That way you can be sure that your web has no errors and has the same aspect for all the people.
PPC Ad Center, a search engine optimization (SEO) tool. It helps you to choose keywords for your site, see the speed it loads, see your rank in search engines... Easy tools to make your web more often found by visitors.
Image Tools:
ImproveYourImages, do you have an image that needs improvement? You can do it there for free.
Gallery, a photo gallery that you can use in your website.
Ajaxload, customize a image to show while something in your web is being loaded.
Technorati Tags: tools for your website
