Toucan

=**Toucan Color editor** =

Overview:
   ||  ||< Toucan is a color editor. It allows you to make custom color palettes and export them to Aviary's other applications (such as Phoenix).
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Link to Aviary site

Link to Toucan wiki ||  || 
 * Educational Benefit:**

The Toucan color editor allows users to play with color and develop specific palettes to use within other applications. As such, Toucan isn't a "stand alone" editor; you use it only in conjunction with the other applications. It does allow you to pick a specific color and develop a color scheme based on that color, or on the antithesis of that color. You can choose to include as many colors as you want as you develop your palette and have a lot of options regarding how you use the color wheel. The ability to develop a color palette based on an uploaded image may be one of the most useful aspects of Toucan. If you are retouching photos, you can import that picture into Toucan, develop a palette with colors that exactly match the skin tones from your picture, and then use that palette in Phoenix to retouch the picture. I have included a video high-lighting a few key features of Toucan: media type="custom" key="5274241"

Aviary provides a very useful wiki to help users get the most out of Toucan as well as an excellent tutorial video that I have included: media type="custom" key="5274061" I think the most important aspect of Toucan is the color deficiency preview. It allows you to see how someone with a color deficiency, such as protanopia (unable to tell green-yellow-red colors apart), would see those colors. As is mentioned in Aviary's tutorial, it is a good way to check and see how people with various types of color-blindness would see the colors you use in a website.


 * Drawbacks:**

The key drawback is the esoteric nature of this tool; creating custom color palettes is not a common task. When evaluating whether or not this tool is worth teaching and using, teachers need to be clear about what the end use will be. If the goal is to increase understanding of the color wheel and how colors relate to each other, then this tool would be a great help. Most educational uses of Aviary's applications is more likely to focus on editing pictures. Students can do that very well without using Toucan.


 * Literature review:**

I did not find anything regarding the use of a color editor in an educational setting.

