Colour

2015-04-07 — 2021-03-24

Wherein the nature of colour is surveyed as a problem of dimensionality, and the reliance on four retinal photoreceptors in compressing an infinite spectrum is described alongside reproduction difficulties for print and RGB.

making things
mind
perception
sparser than thou

User’s guide to hues and the magic of sensing an infinite spectrum with only 4 types of light sensors in the human eyeball, and to the difficulties of reproducing that magic for print and RGB display. A case of dimensionality reduction, one of history’s more lengthily studied.

1 Philosophy

2 Practicalities

Design for non-designers. This is indeed the original what color is the bikeshed problem. Naturally enough, there are too many options.

2.1 Maximally distinct colours

Via Tom Blau, Where can I find a large palette / set of contrasting colors for coloring many datasets on a plot?.

2.2 Informative colour maps

2.3 Harmonious colour palettes

3 Color in Inkscape

4 Colour in imagemagick

Colorspace conversions are hidden in imagemagick.

Figure 2: Tadashi Tokieda

5 Incoming

  • Color Oracle simulates colour blindness for accessibility of visualisations and plots, etc.