Do you struggle to find a visually-pleasing colour palette for your Data Studio reports? Finding the right colours to use for data visualization is both a science and an art. Colour is best applied meaningfully and consistently to help your readers understand the data. Colour also influences our moods, emotions, and perceptions. So, choosing the right colours can be vital to communicating your message in the right way.
Data Studio provides the ability to customize the Theme of your report, which makes it easy to consistently apply a colour scheme across all charts and pages. When creating your own colour palette however, it can be difficult to know which colours will work well together and which will best support your message.
Luckily, there is inspiration all around us. The world is full of pleasing colour combinations, whether created by designers or by nature itself. And using just a photo with an inspiring colour palette, Data Studio can automatically extract a report theme for you!
In this blog post, we will walk you through how to extract a theme from an image and show you 5 hand-picked photos with their respective themes.
How to Extract a Theme from an Image
If the image is already in your report:
- Right click on the image. Select “Extract theme from image”.
If you would like to upload and image or use a web-hosted image:
- Select “Theme and layout”.
- Click “Extract theme from image” at the bottom of the Theme panel.
- Either upload an image file from your computer or enter the URL of the image:
Data Studio will then automatically generate 3 themes from your image. Select the one you like best and apply it to your report.
We selected 5 photos to demonstrate the Extract a Theme feature in Data Studio. Below you can see each photo along with an example dashboard that has each respective theme applied:
Sunset Orange
For our first example, we picked this beautiful photo of a sunset. We have found that extracting a theme from a relatively monochromatic image tends to work well, creating a palette with several shades of the same colour.
Photo by Adrien Aletti
Island Blues
Here is a paradise-like island photo that contains many shades of blue. Although the image does have some greens and greys, Data Studio selected the blues as the primary colours in the theme.
Photo by Guillaume Marques
Nature Greens
These monstera leaves are a simpler subject than the last two examples, but the variations in shading produced a pleasing monochromatic green colour palette.
Photo by Severin Candrian
Sunset Pinks
We couldn’t resist picking another sunset image. This one contains bright pinks and dark purples that provide some contrast in the report theme.
Photo by Kym MacKinnon
Sunflower Purples
For this last example, we chose a photo with colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel. The yellow of the sunflowers provides a contrast and accent against the purple of the sky.
Photo by Gaspar Uhas
We have found that some photos work better than others with the Extract a Theme feature. Simple subjects and monochromatic images tend to more predictably produce pleasing colour palettes. But once you get started, it’s easy to try out different photos until you find the theme that works for you!
Complete list of posts in our 2020 Data Studio series:
1. Visualizing the COVID-19 Pandemic in Google Data Studio
2. Creating a Google Analytics Dashboard in One Click
3. Using Google Maps in Data Studio
4. Visualizing BigQuery Public Datasets in Data Studio
5. Measuring Web Vitals – Part 2: Monitoring in Data Studio
6. Using Parameters in Data Studio
7. How to Style Links in Data Studio
8. Using Filter Controls in Data Studio
9. Extracting a Theme from an Image in Data Studio (this post)
10. Building a Google Analytics 4 Dashboard in Data Studio
11. How to Convert Text to Dates in Google Data Studio
12. 12 Tips for Enhancing Your Tables in Data Studio
Leave A Comment