This book is useful for all sorts of design purposes, although we got it to help us pick colors for our website. But if you want to redecorate your home or apartment, the book is inexpensive enough to purchase just for that. Especially helpful for those of us who simply have trouble picking out our clothes each day, much less the colors for our online publications.

Color Index 2 is a wonderful resource and, I think, in many ways is the better of the two Color Index books for a simple reason - it fills the obvious gaps that the first Color Index left.

Color Index 2 is broken down into six chapters, each of these focusing on a particular color: Blue, Violet, Red, Orange, Yellow or Green. Each of these chapters is itself broken down into sub-sections: an Expansion Palette (i.e. a section where we see different shades of the particular color on scales of brightness and darkness - basically a value chart), hue combinations, combinations with neighboring hues, combinations with opposing hues, combinations with neutral hues, and combinations with black and tints of black. A seventh chapter contains different mixed color combinations similar to those available in the first Color Index. Each tone in the book is accompanied by its CMYK and RGB "recipe."

What makes this book (again, smallish, well-printed, 357 pages on glossy paper with a black rubber cover) special is that it allows those of us interested in monochromatic color schemes to better pick colors to use; the value charts for each color (which begin each respective chapter) are valuable as well for those wishing to do computer coloring for comic books, painting, etc., and are looking for the perfect full- and half-tones needed to get their professional results. I expect to make wide use of this book in the future, and I salute Jim Krause for putting such a great resource together.

I had already purchased the original color index (1) and it has helped me out on many many occasions, so acquiring Color index 2 just seemed logical.
While the original color index focuses on color combinations that reflect feelings (quiet, active, nature, ect) this one focuses on combinations per color (what would go well with blue, or what would go well with green, ect) which I find super handy when clients ask "I want something Pinkish"

I needed something to use as a quick guide and reference for finding color schemes and the correct color values when designing printed materials.
You get two books packed in a hard, slide out type storage box (the image you see is the outter case) It slides open to reveal the two books; version 1 and the latest version, book 2.
The book is broken down into color pallettes using a color wheel and has CMYK values on one side of the page and the corresponding RGB value on the other side of the page and a sample color scheme in the middle.
I am very pleased with the layout, compact size, and contents of these books.
I began using it immediately with my design work and it provided a better result in
my full color printed products.
LRG
[...]

I put the two little books into my color ref drawer along with my pantone swatches and am still trying to figure out what to do with the box.