The Daily Click ::. Forums ::. General Chat ::. Palette Creation
 

Post Reply  Post Oekaki 
 

Posted By Message

Sketchy

Cornwall UK

Registered
  06/11/2004
Points
  1970

VIP MemberWeekly Picture Me This Round 43 Winner!Weekly Picture Me This Round 47 WinnerPicture Me This Round 49 Winner!
7th March, 2014 at 07/03/2014 15:15:37 -

I've been thinking about making a pixel art oriented graphics app for a while, and came to the conclusion that there are just two things you really need (and which no app currently provides both of) - a simple and efficient interface / set of tools, and good color selection features.
While making a full graphics app like I wanted, is probably too big an undertaking, I think a palette creation tool is actually quite realistic...

So, I was reading this thread: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=10695
...some examples from which are shown here:
Image

You can see that as colors get lighter/darker, they also change hue (lighter colors become more yellowish; darker colors become more blueish). You can also see that the individual color "ramps" share some shades (eg. in the second example, a reddish color is part of both the red and purple ramps).

I want to create a tool that lets you create these ramps, and to link them together into a usefully presented palette. Below are a couple of my ideas. With all of them, you will be able to select a range of cells, and have the hue/saturation/lightness/red/green/blue components automatically change smoothly between them (eg. increase hue by 4% and lightness by 10% for each successive cell), or to interpolate between two cells.


Hexagonal Grid:
It's still basically just a 16x16 grid (meaning up to 256 colors), but the hexagonal cells mean that each has 6 neighbours rather than the 4 of a square grid, so it's easier for a color to be shared between multiple ramps, and to have ramps radiate outwards from a single color (usualy either the lightest or darkest). It's very simple, but quite versatile.
Image


Nodes:
Here, there is no grid at all - you can just create color nodes wherever you like, and connect them with lines to form ramps (or click on the lines to create a new color between two others). I think for small palettes it would be really useful, but it would be messy and awkward with larger palettes (imagine a 256 color palette!).
Image


Wheel:
My final idea, is a sort of wheel. The example below shows it as a kind of 32x8 grid (256 colors), but I think 16x16 would be better. Looking at the original palette examples, you can see that the example below is the same as the second of those, but warped into a circle. Although the example below doesn't demonstrate it, you could have ramps radiating out from the centre, or running in a circular direction, or a mix of the two.
Image



The other interesting thing is that I want to use the CIE-L*c*h* color space ( http://www.colourphil.co.uk/lab_lch_colour_space.shtml ), which is a variant of the Lab color space used by Photoshop etc. It has the advantage of being perceptually uniform - and means it will allow you to change hue, without affecting the perceived lightness, for example (normally, bluer colors appear darker than yellow colors) - and it means that we can interpolate between colors properly ( http://coderwall.com/p/_w1rra ).

This is what my color selector looks like at present:
Image


Anyway, just thought I'd share what I've been up to.
If you think any of those palette systems sound better than the others, or if you can think of a good one yourself, please let me know

 
n/a

UrbanMonk

BRING BACK MITCH

Registered
  07/07/2008
Points
  49566

Has Donated, Thank You!Little Pirate!ARGH SignKliktober Special Award TagPicture Me This Round 33 Winner!The Outlaw!VIP MemberHasslevania 2!I am an April FoolKitty
Picture Me This Round 32 Winner!Picture Me This Round 42 Winner!Picture Me This Round 44 Winner!Picture Me This Round 53 Winner!
8th March, 2014 at 08/03/2014 19:29:20 -

That is a cool thread on pixel joint.
That site always depresses me because I don't think I'll ever be to the level some of those artist are over there.

EDIT: If you're building a palette building application why not just give the user a choice of how they want it laid out. From what I understand from that thread it doesn't matter so much and is personal preference.

Edited by UrbanMonk

 
n/a
   

Post Reply



 



Advertisement

Worth A Click