How to better organize a color palette ?

ggaliens · 02-08-2015, 04:31 AM

How to better organize a color palette ?

I have a plugin that uses the HTML's 140 or so named colors. It imports into Wings palette. But my initial order is hap-hazard.

Given any color palette ... could we use color theory to do a nice job of organizing ?

I can to write an "auto-arrange" menu item fot palette that take a scrambled list and arranged using some ideas from color theory.

Just here to solicit any ideas. Don't think I'll go so far as to change into a "wheel" with pie-slices and concentric chunks of pie slices (typical). Will probably just try to re-order the standard grid.

ggaliens · 02-08-2015, 02:09 PM

Because a color palette seems to naturally want three "axes" as opposed to two axes (nxm color grid as we have), I think it is a little tricky to do an auto arrange ? Could try to lump into three groups ...

colors mostly between (R & B) ... then mostly between (R & G) and then mostly between (B&G). But Think that still pretty tricky.

Nova · 02-13-2015, 07:52 AM

Photoshop has a 1D color scale, where it goes Red>Yellow>Green>Blue>Magenta. You could maybe sort it this way, starting from top left, and filling in left to right. Personally, that would be enough for me.

Have you considered being able to export custom palettes?

micheus · (This post was last modified: 02-13-2015, 07:31 PM by micheus.)

(02-13-2015, 07:52 AM)Nova Wrote: where it goes Red>Yellow>Green>Blue>Magenta. You could maybe sort it this way, starting from top left, and filling in left to right.

That is something we already can do with the current palette:

ggaliens · 02-13-2015, 04:03 PM

Micheus , what is the command you issued to sort the colors ?

Actually ... it does not look sorted in your picture for a few different reasons ... one of them being two "bands" of red.

micheus · 02-13-2015, 07:35 PM

I just update the image, although I forget the cyan this time.

You just need to add the key colors and then use Interpolate option to create the gradient.
We can use that to create the palettes and then use Export and Import for sharing it.

ggaliens · 02-13-2015, 09:43 PM

Interpolate is not that much like what I'm speaking about ... even it if is a great option.

Help text could be improved a little for interpolate, but is OK.

Nova · (This post was last modified: 02-13-2015, 10:34 PM by Nova.)

I think the two bands of red are ok, the spectrum kind of loops anyway, so it's natural that the start and end colour are so similar. I don't think it'd be too much of an issue for people already familiar with this.

ggaliens · 02-14-2015, 01:01 AM

I was not starting this thread looking for color interpolation. I was starting it looking for ideas on how to arrange existing palette colors. Even if the existing palette has a weird content.

micheus · 02-14-2015, 02:51 PM

I understood that. I was just showing how to achieve what Nova was purposing.

I think the current one is useful for most project and users, so I wouldn't think about change it without rewrite it to offer - at least - similar options we have in other softwares - and you said we don't expect you do that.

For those who need choose colors from standard patterns like Pantone and DicColor the user tkbd showed an simple approach by just uploading an image of those patterns which the user can use pic color to select the desired color to work. (here in this link)