colors

[Fey]

picking colors is for me the most unpleasant thing in alchemy now. the little color picker is insufficient and to use the secondary picker too much clicking has to be done.
integrating the little color picker on the toolbar is good idea for quick color picking.
also it would be great if you mark on the picker the color i am currently using. then it is easier to pick new color.
if the small picker is on the toolbar, than it would be good to use the secondary palette where the little picker is now.

[Leo]

hey,

just boarded the subject

is there any need for the "color switcher" module to pop up a 2nd palette when i check the "base color" option?
you know, there's already one at the main toolbar...

also, the color picker seems to be linked to the 1st palette, so i can't use it when this module is activated

[crowline]

still need to look through some of the earlier links in this thread, but i ran across the adobe palette builder, kuler, and thought id drop the link here while i was thinking of it.

http://kuler.adobe.com

[jen]

After using Alchemy for live performances, I'd really like to be able to choose colours by hotkey so I don't get any menus popping up while drawing. I already use the buttons on my tablet for other settings, but I've got another midi controller so I could trigger more keystrokes. I'd like to set it up as a colour palette. It would be handy to have about 6 spaces where I could assign both my own hotkey and colour value.

[Kasper Hviid]

I think the approach Algodoo has to color is truly innovative: The random colors are based on user-defined color themes. In the settings to the right, HUE will be a random value between 20 and 135. Limiting the palette give more sense than just "random colors".

Try downloading the tryout of Algodoo and take a look at it.

[crowline]

hadn't seen that before, is it part of this program then?
http://www.algodoo.com/wiki/Download

wondering if you have used the "swatch" build of alchemy with the new color tools. particularly the "modulate colors" dialog, and colorlovers.com integration. These features allow for controlled randomness, but are by no means a "be all/end all" ... thanks for the post/link.

[Kasper Hviid]

Yup, that's the software I'm talking about. Try it out, its pretty fun.

That Swatch Build is simply amazing! How could I have missed that? So far I have kept to black and white painting, but no more!

[crowline]

ill have to fire up the windows partition to give it a try:-)

glad you liked the swatchified alchemy! i really keep trying to find the time to get the rough edges and minor issues fixed so we can push out a stable release, but the current job and hunt for a "real" job keep getting in the way.

Since there isnt any documentation yet just want to point out a couple non-obvious features. undo can be enabled in the settings panel, and right clicking on the current color gives a popup with "harmonious" colors rather than the usual color picker panel.

would be fun to add some more swatch generation features, possibly based on algodoo or theory from james guyney's color and light book.... but this isnt gonna happen probably till i get the rest fixed up.

[Kasper Hviid]

That rightclicking dialog is nice - here's a drawing where I used it:

http://kasper-hviid.deviantart.com/art/A-fish-297124414

I didn't knew James Gurney's book, but from what I searched, it sounds really good.

It would be cool if new shapes were able to pick up the color from existing shapes and then mix it with the new shapes colors. Sort of the same way that wet-on-wet paints mixes together:

[crowline]

Thats a very interesting idea for a color module. Without too much thinking it sounds pretty easy to implement. Would probably set it up as an affect module. The most direct implementation would just be to set the new shape's color to a mixture of the current color and whatever is under the cursor at the time of the initial click, or perhaps more interestingly when the click is released... though the later may behave unexpectedly with some drawing modules which produce multiple shapes. (although with alchemy, unexpected isn't necessarily bad). Doing something more complicated like averaging all the colors underneath the shape seems like it may not be worth the effort and like it may produce less interesting results.

the mixture would probably ideally happen in an approximation of a RYB colorspace rather than RGB, to give a more natural / paint-like mixture. I already implemented conversion functions for an approximated RYB colorspace, similar to the color wheel in kuler, but i am not sure how well this conversion technique would work for RYB color MIXING. If that is the case it may require a different conversion technique, specifically for color mixing. There is a technical paper on the subject floating around on my hard-drive somewhere that i previously used to write a perl script which did something similar.

May have to re-look that up.