Trailhead

Palettes

Ready-made palettes, plus one you can grow from a single color. Pick a box to see every color's codes for print and screen, check that your text reads, and save swatches for Photoshop.

Gradient & shadow

Set a fill and the shadow under it, and watch both change on the card. Copy the CSS or save the fill as an image.

Type scale

Pick a base size and a ratio. Each step up is the one below it times that ratio, so 16px at 1.25 gives you 20, 25 and 31.

Image colors

Drop in a photo from the trail and see which colors it's really built from, and how much of the picture each one covers.

Letter maker

Draw each letter on the pad, or photograph a page of hand lettering and let the tool trace it. You get a font file you can install. A handful of letters is enough to start.

Mood board

Collect the photos, colors and notes for a project in one place. Drag to move things. The corner handle resizes and the top handle rotates.

Adjust

Change the warmth, contrast and grain, or start from a preset look. Drag the slider under the photo to compare it with the original.

Blend modes

Put a layer over your photo and see all sixteen Photoshop blend modes at once. Click any thumbnail to see it full size.

Print effects

These copy old printing methods. Halftone turns the photo into dots, like a newspaper. Dither and posterize redraw it with a few inks, and duotone uses just two.

Texture maker

Paper grain, kraft fiber, ink speckle, halftone, worn stamp, linen and topo lines. Lay one over a flat digital design and it starts to look printed.

Line art

Turns a photo into a drawing with one line weight, like the Trailhead illustrations. Photos with a clear subject and a plain background work best.

Screen print

Splits your image into two or three ink layers, the way a screen printer or risograph would print it. Where inks overlap, they mix. You get a preview and the black-and-white plates a print shop asks for.

Poster maker

Choose one of the four Trailhead layouts, then add your words and art. The art can be your photo, your badge or your trail map, and the headline can use the font you made in Letter maker.

Badge maker

Round badges with words curved around the edge and a little drawing in the middle, for logos, stickers, patches and merch.

Trail map

Draw a route, add landmarks and labels, and the legend fills itself in. Use it for event maps, hike invites or directions to a wedding.

Mockups

See your design on a tote bag, a tee, a framed print, a sticker or a postcard before you send it off to be made.

Art director

Checks a design against the Trailhead style rules: how many colors it uses, which trail palette it is closest to, how much contrast it has, and how busy it looks. It runs in your browser, so nothing is sent anywhere.

Print check

Checks a file against the size you want to print it at: sharpness, what gets trimmed, bleed, the safe area for text, and colors that look brighter on screen than ink can manage.

Photo to topo

Treats the light and dark in a photo as height and draws contour lines over it, like a hiking map. Bright areas become peaks and shadows become valleys.

Linocut

Makes a photo look carved into a block and printed by hand. Dark areas print solid, light areas are cut away, and the tones in between turn into gouge marks.

Cyanotype

Turns a photo into a negative for sun printing. Print the negative on transparency film, lay it on paper coated with cyanotype chemistry, and leave it in the sun. The preview shows roughly how the finished print will look.

Living prints

Print something here, hang it up, then point a phone at it and it comes alive on the paper. The stars turn, the sound plays, the lichen grows, the lines shimmer. A small code on the print tells any phone which animation belongs to it, so friends can scan it too.

Lake color year

Pick a lake and a year, and Trailhead reads the color of the water from NASA satellite photos, one day at a time. You get the whole year as a print: winter ice, spring runoff, summer blue, algae blooms, fall storms. Then use those colors as a palette anywhere on the site.

Pocket scanner

Turn your phone into a scanner for Photoshop. Shoot a leaf, a pencil sketch, bark or a paper texture, and it lands in your open Photoshop document a few seconds later as its own layer. No cables, no AirDrop, no emailing yourself.

Clip lab

Color looks and effects for short video clips. Trim it, crop it for a post, give it the feel of slide film or a riso print, and turn moving water silky with a long exposure. Everything plays live, and nothing leaves your device.

Cinemagraph

A still photo where one thing keeps moving. Paint over the part that should move, like falling water, steam from a mug or a flag, and everything else freezes. The loop is crossfaded so it never jumps.

Titles

Animated titles and name bars in the Trailhead fonts, laid over your clip. Good for the start of a trip video, a reel or a class project.

Rotoscope sketch

Turns a clip into a hand-drawn animation. Every frame is traced as ink lines on paper, the lines boil like a sketchbook flip-book, and you can add a watercolor wash or flat colors from a palette.

Moving type

Your words fill the frame in rows, and a drifting shape moves through them like a flock of starlings. Inside the shape the words print dark, and outside they fade to a whisper. Type anything, pick a shape, and save a loop that never jumps.

Golden hour

Relights a flat midday photo as sunrise, golden hour, sunset or blue hour. Click the photo to move the sun.

Live camera

Point your phone or webcam at something and watch it turn into a linocut, a topo map, line art or a cyanotype as you move. Take a photo to keep working on it at full quality. The video stays on your device and never gets uploaded.

Riso print shop

Splits a photo into two or three real risograph inks and shows how they'll overlap on paper, slightly out of line, the way a riso machine prints. You get one file per ink drum, ready to take to a riso studio.

Stitch pattern

Turns a photo into a cross-stitch or punch-needle pattern using real DMC floss colors. You get a printable chart with a symbol in every square, a floss list with how much of each color you need, and the finished size on your fabric.

Paper-cut layers

Splits a photo into layers from back to front, like sky, far ridge, near ridge and trees, for a layered paper cut or shadow box. Move your mouse over the preview, or tilt your phone, to see the depth. Each layer saves as a cut file for scissors, a craft knife or a cutting machine.

Sound print

Record a bird call, a creek or wind in the trees, and turn the sound into a print. Time runs left to right (or outward, for tree rings) and pitch runs bottom to top, so every chirp leaves its own mark. Your recording stays on your device.

Sky print

Draws the night sky as it looked from a place at a moment, with the stars, constellations, Milky Way and moon where they really were. Make one for the night you camped somewhere, or the night someone was born.

Growth patterns

Grows patterns the way lichen, coral and moss spread, using the same chemistry math that explains spots and stripes in nature. Draw on it to plant new growth. Every run comes out different, and the pattern tiles seamlessly.

Hand-drawn wiggle

Makes still artwork shimmer like a hand-drawn cartoon, where every frame was traced again by hand. Pick something you made here or upload your own, then save it as a looping GIF or a video for social posts.

Colorway grid

Shows one design in every palette at once, so you can compare them side by side instead of trying them one at a time. Click a card to see it large.

Knit & quilt chart

Turns a photo into a colorwork knitting chart or a patchwork quilt layout. Knitting charts warn you about long floats. Quilts come with a cutting list and how much of each fabric to buy.

Letterpress

Sets your words, or a piece of art, as if they were pressed into thick cotton paper: a dent you can almost feel, ink squeezed toward the edges, and a little unevenness from a hand-inked press.

Booklet maker

Lays out a stapled booklet so the pages come out in the right order once you print, fold and staple. Add photos or art from any tool, put them in order, and it handles the shuffling that booklet printing needs.

Leaf print

Photograph a leaf, fern or flower on plain paper and this lifts it off the background as a clean shape. Use it as a silhouette, a sun print, a rubbing or a stamp, or send it to Cyanotype as a negative.

Your shelf

The last 30 things you saved from Trailhead, kept in this browser so you can grab them again. Nothing is uploaded. Clearing your browser data, or opening the site in a private window, empties the shelf.

Zine maker

Lay out an eight-page mini zine that prints on one sheet of letter paper. Fill each page with a photo, something you made here, or your own words. The tool puts the pages in the right order for folding.

Pattern maker

Repeat little drawings into a pattern for wrapping paper, fabric, phone wallpapers or poster backgrounds. You can also turn any photo or texture into a tile that repeats without seams.

Stamps & patches

Turn your art into a postage stamp, an embroidered patch or an enamel pin, and see roughly how it would look made for real.

Field guide card

A page in the style of an old nature guide: a plate number, a title, your art with numbered points, and notes. Click the picture to add a numbered point.

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