[HN Gopher] Color for the color-challenged
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       Color for the color-challenged
        
       Author : azan-n
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2023-10-02 07:26 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ferdychristant.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ferdychristant.com)
        
       | pbj1968 wrote:
       | Thought this was about a cure for color blindness and now I'm
       | disappointed
        
         | itishappy wrote:
         | Same! The banner rendered entirely in red and green got a
         | chuckle out of me.
        
         | Nevermark wrote:
         | It gives you hex codes for your colors.
         | 
         | Could you see all the hex codes?
        
           | bobthepanda wrote:
           | Hex codes are helpful for you to understand what other people
           | are seeing, maybe, but not helpful for your sight.
        
         | gnicholas wrote:
         | I also thought this would have to do with various deficiencies
         | in color perception. I suppose the tips could still be useful,
         | but not quite the same thing!
        
         | cat_plus_plus wrote:
         | Don't go around telling people you don't see color, will get
         | you in trouble these days!
        
       | cpmsmith wrote:
       | This article mentions a notable limitation of the HSL colour
       | model:
       | 
       | > Perceived brightness is not at all uniform at equal starting
       | points, it depends on the hue, as well as the saturation.
       | 
       | ...but it doesn't mention an (under-discussed) solution
       | available: using a better colour model. OKLCH uses similarly
       | understandable coordinates, "chroma" being roughly the same
       | concept as "saturation", but is designed to avoid just this kind
       | of problem. That is, if you change the "hue" coordinate, you can
       | reasonably expect the perceived lightness and chroma of the
       | resulting colour not to change. Where such a colour does not
       | exist, e.g. a blue with the same lightness and chroma as #FFFF00
       | yellow, it's simply out of gamut.
       | 
       | There's a colour picker web app[0] that shows the boundaries of
       | the space along with smaller spaces like sRGB, and it's helpful
       | for getting a feel for it. It also links to a post[1] laying out
       | the reasons to use OKLCH in web projects (it's now supported by
       | all three major engines), and the post[2] introducing OKLAB (same
       | space, different coordinate system) is heavy on technical
       | details.
       | 
       | [0]: https://oklch.com/
       | 
       | [1]: https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/oklch-in-css-why-quit-
       | rg...
       | 
       | [2]: https://bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab/
        
       | aragonite wrote:
       | I realized belatedly that it's pretty easy to memorize by heart
       | the RGB hex codes of the most common colors by deriving them from
       | basic color theory. For example, what's the hex code for yellow?
       | Well yellow is the complementary color of blue, and so
       | hex(yellow) is just the ones' complement of hex(blue)=#0000FF,
       | i.e, #FFFF00
       | 
       | Likewise, cyan is the complementary color of red, so hex(cyan) is
       | the ones' complement of hex(red)=#FF0000, i.e. #00FFFF. This hex
       | code also makes clear that cyan is produced by mixing equal
       | amounts of green and blue light.
       | 
       | what about azure? azure is when you take cyan and and 'de-
       | emphasize' its green component. So you just halve the green part
       | of its hex code, to get #0080FF. If you instead halve the blue
       | part, you get #00FF80 (spring green)
       | 
       | likewise, orange is when you take yellow (#FFFF00) and halve its
       | green component, so: #FF8000.
       | 
       | And so on. Not every common color can be derived in this way, but
       | you can go very far.
        
         | egypturnash wrote:
         | Realistically you do not want to use super-pure colors like
         | this for everything. It's the visual equivalent of shouting
         | everything at the top of your lungs. Pull back from those FFs
         | and give yourself some room for nuance.
        
         | hamaluik wrote:
         | Holy crap. Thank you!
        
       | sph wrote:
       | Such wealth of knowledge, hidden beneath the dark patterns of
       | Medium. Sad, I'm the target audience but as soon as I saw the
       | Medium nag screen, I'm out.
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-04 23:01 UTC)