[HN Gopher] Show HN: Huemint - Machine learning for color design
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       Show HN: Huemint - Machine learning for color design
        
       Author : Jack000
       Score  : 214 points
       Date   : 2022-03-02 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (huemint.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (huemint.com)
        
       | rtcoms wrote:
       | Nice work.
       | 
       | Few days back I was trying to decide a colr theme which woul work
       | for both light and dark mode. Would this be able to solve that ?
        
       | xingped wrote:
       | This is amazing! I love it! Actually needed this kind of thing
       | right now to figure out a color scheme for a website.
       | 
       | If able, would it be possible to add Material-UI as a section
       | similar to the Bootstrap section?
        
       | crudbug wrote:
       | Great work. The theme generated is also great -
       | https://huemint.com/bootstrap-basic/
        
       | lepapillon wrote:
       | What a great idea. My intuition for matching colours like this
       | isn't very strong, so this is really helpful for mocking things
       | up. Thanks for sharing.
        
       | hardwaregeek wrote:
       | This is really nice! It'd be nice if the colors picked were saved
       | in the url, so that you can use history to navigate the different
       | patterns generated.
        
         | shadowoflight wrote:
         | I love this suggestion (and hope the OP implements it), but in
         | the meantime, there _is_ a link button on the toolbar right
         | next to the palette that provides a link to the generated
         | palette.
        
       | toxik wrote:
       | Page crashes on my phone. Safari.
        
       | adriancooney wrote:
       | This is incredible. I've been struggling with a color palette for
       | my most recent project so I uploaded a screenshot of it, clicked
       | generate and I instantly got a really nice palette! Amazing work
       | - thank you.
        
       | Syzygies wrote:
       | Nice. I have daydreamed about something like this for years, and
       | this is not it.
       | 
       | I'd imagine a series of left/right comparisons, like a visit to
       | an eye doctor, where the machine learning is rewarded for its
       | ability to predict my preferences. Eventually (a time commitment
       | for me) it will be able to build from scratch color designs that
       | I love.
       | 
       | This is like an early application of machine learning: What are
       | the odds of victory for this backgammon position? Here, instead,
       | we've estimating a preference function on color triples. Is RGB
       | even the right domain, or do we want to work in some frequency
       | transform, to capture the equivalent to musical chords. This is
       | an empirical question, that can only be answered by trying to
       | estimate this preference function, and noticing ripples better
       | resolved by a different parametrization.
       | 
       | This would be easy, compared to the Riemannian geometry used in
       | medical imaging. There's more money there.
       | 
       | For commercial use one cares what others think. There's the
       | speciation question: You won't synthesize deep jazz tracks and
       | deep blues tracks without separating the advice into species.
       | Identifying clusters in data is something statisticians have
       | worried about since the dawn of statistics.
        
       | uxamanda wrote:
       | This is nice. Once of my favorite palette tools is coolors.co,
       | and they have a nice feature that let's you hit spacebar for a
       | new palette. Would be useful here too I think.
       | 
       | Also would be nice to "apply" the colors from an upload image to
       | the various scenarios. I.e. grab X colors from image and generate
       | would cycle through various forms of those (possible adding extra
       | complementary colors as needed).
        
         | uxamanda wrote:
         | Hmm, I realize I was the upload image works backwards from how
         | I expected - I think you are actually intending me to upload a
         | screenshot of a design to then swap out palettes. That is super
         | cool, but on first guess I thought you were extracting from
         | mine to make a palette. Might need a little helper text, but
         | cool feature!
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | That's really cool! I like the various demos of the themes.
       | 
       | I need to play with it some more, and understand how to use it,
       | but good job!
        
       | desireco42 wrote:
       | Totally don't buy the machine learning thing for this, but
       | fantastically well done, especially like example pages. Really
       | good, thank you for this.
        
         | __mharrison__ wrote:
         | Yes, I'm not sure how ml is used or needed here. But the
         | website is well done.
        
         | desireco42 wrote:
         | I am a little bit confused, why does a scheme changes every
         | time I switch page, I would like to see single scheme applied
         | all over? Or maybe I am not understanding how this works?
        
           | owlninja wrote:
           | I think I see - you can 'lock' the colors at the top and they
           | remain persistent.
        
       | rambambram wrote:
       | Wow, nice job!
       | 
       | I clicked around and got the same color palettes on multiple
       | occasions. Is that because I have to give the system some input
       | for it to work?
       | 
       | Your websites are fantastic, by the way. Google and/or NASA
       | should contact you. ;)
        
         | Jack000 wrote:
         | Try increasing the "creativity" slider in the options. Setting
         | it to a higher value will increase diversity at the cost of
         | accuracy. (This controls the sampling temperature like in
         | language models)
         | 
         | When I use the tool myself, I usually start with the
         | transformer model to lock the first few colors, then switch to
         | the diffusion model if I see a repeat. When all colors are
         | locked except one or two, the "random" mode starts working if
         | you still need more variations.
        
           | rambambram wrote:
           | Thanks. Still browsing your photo galleries, just beautiful.
        
       | Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
       | In Russian, the name reads as something indecent.
        
       | educaysean wrote:
       | I opened it with a skeptical eye and walked away completely
       | impressed. Despite the odd dissonances that pop up at intervals,
       | many of the palettes produced are not only trendy and pleasing
       | but also unexpected and creative in some ways.
       | 
       | Huge kudos!
        
       | bebopsbraunbaer wrote:
       | very cool! Thanks for sharing
        
       | canniballectern wrote:
       | This is really cool, I'm excited to see more ML applied to design
       | like this.
       | 
       | One project I wish someone would build is an ML-powered algorithm
       | for perceptually even saturation, drawing on crowdsourced data to
       | help pick colors that most people would perceive as being equally
       | colorful
        
       | armchairhacker wrote:
       | I've used multiple color palette generators and this is
       | definitely one of the best. Besides the ML, showing the colors on
       | images like a phone and real web pages is really impressive.
       | 
       | My one suggestion is since you have Bootstrap support, maybe add
       | TailwindCSS utility support as well
        
       | hwers wrote:
       | Really gorgeous visualization! (Took me a bit to realize you
       | could scroll out and rotate it.)
        
         | Jack000 wrote:
         | thanks! it's supposed to be like an easter egg.
        
       | shadowoflight wrote:
       | This is fantastic, and I will definitely use it for personal
       | projects in the future!
       | 
       | I see a few requests for practical features here, but I have one
       | incredibly silly request: how plausible would it be to restrict
       | the colors to a set list of RGB values, so one could, say,
       | generate color palettes for physical mediums based on medium
       | color -> RGB conversion lists, such as painting, cross stitch
       | thread[0], or yarn[1]?
       | 
       | [0]: https://threadcolors.com
       | 
       | [1]: https://halcyonyarn.com/yarn-colors/color-codes/
        
       | jcims wrote:
       | I have to say I'm very impressed with the extent to which you
       | explored this idea, explained it and then applied to a very
       | usable and useful service.
       | 
       | Well done!
        
       | bduerst wrote:
       | Usually I just got to Adobe kuler to find color schemes for
       | projects: https://color.adobe.com/explore
       | 
       | But this project creates some pretty good ones on the fly. I'd be
       | interested in knowing what features of colors it's uncovered,
       | that it uses to generate new swatches.
        
       | Jack000 wrote:
       | Also, here's a writeup on how the machine learning system works:
       | https://huemint.com/about/#machine-learning
       | 
       | You can guide the ML model by locking one or more colors, then
       | clicking generate again. (click the circular swatch on top to
       | lock a color)
        
         | tqi wrote:
         | This was really cool project and a great writeup!
         | 
         | It's interesting to think what would happen if a tool /
         | technique like this one became super popular. Would we see more
         | variation, as more people could choose schemes that look good?
         | Or would we see convergence as there are no longer people
         | actively making decisions (similar to what may be happening in
         | the stock market due to the rise of index funds: [1])?
         | 
         | [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/the-
         | autopi...
        
         | jerpint wrote:
         | Very impressive technical work, a relatively complex approach
         | explained in a simple way, well done
        
         | isoprophlex wrote:
         | This writeup is fantastic. Clear description, beautiful
         | visualizations... looks like a true labor of love.
        
         | SpaceManNabs wrote:
         | This should be added to the AI for art list going around!
         | 
         | edit: I forgot where I saw the list for 2021 but it included
         | stuff like this
         | https://twitter.com/ML4CDworkshop/status/1467661464400183298...
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-02 23:00 UTC)