Color pickers and palette management

[nornagon]

I'm writing a pixel editor, and I want to build a kickass color picker and palette tool. But I'm pretty noob at actually pixelling, so I don't have a great feel for what's important in those tools.

I remember seeing a colour picker somewhere in which you would choose a colour, and it would show you the colour plus a couple of shades lighter, darker, redder, bluer and greener, but I haven't been able to find it.

Some references I've collected: http://hslpicker.com/, http://www.colourlovers.com/colors/add, and some more crazy stuff like http://www.colorotate.org/. I collected some assorted screenshots and more references: http://nornagon.net/color-pickers.html

As for organising palettes, I haven't really seen anything more than a list of colours. Would it be helpful to be able to organise a palette into a set of ramps? Is it nicer to organise it in a freeform way, like or (from Helm and Arne on this thread http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=4306.0)?


How do you like to choose and organise your colours? Is there a particular tool you love to pieces? Is there something you wish you could do that nothing currently supports?

Ideas very welcome!

[HughSpectrum]

For organizing palettes, I think everybody has their own way of doing so and their own way of visualizing it.  My wish is that we would be able to save a palette file that's organized in as was done in an image.

Also, if you're creating a palette editor/color picker, PLEASE make sure that it has HSL. GraphicsGale uses HSL, but I have always found HSV awkward to work with yet it seems to be the standard in most other programs.

Also, ColourLovers' palette editor is very good at creating hue ramps (they need to be tweaked by hand, of course).

[Conzeit]

my palletes usually look like the second example, and I do think it would be great to have palletes sorted into ramps.

I think that this would help you have effects like "lightwn" or "darken" in pixelart without the loss of control usually associated with it. What "darken" basically does is make everything a little darker, right? so if you had a brush with a "darken" effect and the program understood the concept of ramps, you could just tell it to make everything you go over with your brush one shade darker in the ramp. You could also make a sort of instant recolor tool, by telling it to make all the shades in one ramp be the change to the corresponding level of lightness in another ramp, it would make animating sprites with stripes or tattoos a lot easier.

[nornagon]

Is it important to be able to see a live updating preview of tweaking palette colors?

[HughSpectrum]

For indexed (images lower than 16bpp and require palette) images, yes.

[PypeBros]

Also, if you're creating a palette editor/color picker, PLEASE make sure that it has HSL. GraphicsGale uses HSL, but I have always found HSV awkward to work with yet it seems to be the standard in most other programs.

Are the equations for converting HSL<->RGB available somewhere ? I could try that for my own editor ...

[nornagon]

Wikipedia is your friend

[Ai]

Don't forget GPick as a reference application (http://code.google.com/p/gpick/):
* Color scheme generation (complementary, split complementary, triadic, square, etc)
* LAB and linear RGB gradienting (these give a much more reliable and balanced result than normal RGB, HSL, or HSV)
* Edit /adjust colors in LAB (gives a more consistent control over brightness and chromaticity)
* DnD of colors, including multiple-at-once; Ability to either move or copy during DnD, according to whether Shift is held down or not
* 7-slot hexagonal-tiled colors display, for visual comparison
* preview gradients (with 3 'endpoint' colors) before adding one or all of the generated colors to the palette. (see the "Blend colors" tool, if you can get GPick 0.24 for your platform)

These are the functions I get a lot of use out of. Also GPick's "Variations" tool is a good example of what you're talking about in the OP ("you would choose a colour, and it would show you the colour plus a couple of shades lighter, darker, redder, bluer and greener")

I'd be intrigued to see how you solve the 'shaped-palette' problem. I've worked on it myself and so far hold the position that it makes the GUI a lot more complex. I'd love to be proved wrong though, cause I prefer shaped palettes myself.

EDIT: I've put my work-in-progress guide to GPick up at https://sites.google.com/site/davidgowersmiscstuff/gpick-guide
Everything except the images were preserved when I pasted it in.

[HughSpectrum]

Finally, an opportunity to try out the LAB sliders, and they're very good.