For those of you who don’t remember, FreshDV did a tutorial on Adobe’s online flash based color theme design tool called Kuler. At the time I wondered how long it would take for Kuler to become its own application and at some point if Adobe would attempt to monetize it. In my opinion what makes Kuler work is that it is free, it gives users incentives to access it to build and share their themes thus creating a pretty extensive library. If they were to charge for this service I don’t think it would get near the response it has.

Well as of today its good news for Kuler! While not completely its own standalone software, Adobe has repackaged it in the form of a cross platform Apollo-based widget that can read themes and updates via RSS feeds. Very cool. One of the downsides for me that I found disappointing was the inability to create schemes and apply rules directly within the app. Basically the desktop app allows you to browse all the color schemes online. While that is very cool, the ability to create my own themes and apply rules to base colors etc…is where a lot of the power in Kuler is for me. The widget will save me sometime but I would find it alot more useful if I had access to the full range of creation tools through the desktop app as well. Here is to hoping V2.0 includes those tools. In the meantime you can continue to create and modify your designs via the online version of Kuler.

From Adobe:

The kuler desktop offers the same RSS feed functionality as the kuler Apple Dashboard Widget but with a new form factor (see image). Users can view RSS feeds of the highest rated, most popular, and newest themes from the kuler site, search thousands of titled and tagged themes, search by kuler user name, and copy theme Hex values to the clipboard.

Here are the instructions to download and install the app, if you want to know how to create, download and share themes and for a basic overview check out our FreshDV Kuler Tutorial.

Installation steps:
1. Download Adobe’s Apollo Runtime
2. Unzip and Install Apollo
3. 3. Download Kuler Desktop
4. With Apollo installed you should be able to load and run the file “kuler_desktop_051707.air” Apollo should launch the
installer and run.
5. Load it up and enjoy the new wave of desktop publishing functionality!!