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Show HN: My first native iOS app – Cone, a real time color picker

418 points by _kush 9y ago

taspeotis 9y ago
I really liked the landing page, especially the outline of the iPhone with an example of the app running inside of it.
- zytek 9y ago
  +1 to that, landing page is beautiful, another +1 for choosing Iceland <3
- oblio 9y ago
  The landing page was really cool. A minor suggestion I have: could the animation be slowed down a bit? I was scanning the page and the cursor moving around was a bit annoying. I think that the way the application works will still be clear if the animation plays at half of its current speed.
  - penpapersw 9y ago
    I thought it was just the right speed.
    - oblio 9y ago
      Another option: maybe stop the loop after 1 cycle? Or add a pause between cycles? :)
      - Kiro 9y ago
        Definitely not stop it after 1 cycle. I watched it over and over many times. Please no pause either. I really really like it the way it is now. One of the best demos I've seen.
- loceng 9y ago
  Not sure if this would have been inspiration, however Samsung currently has an ad campaign out to showcase how much screen surface area there is; https://img.us.news.samsung.com/us/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/21150031/013_GalaxyS8_Blue.jpg https://img.us.news.samsung.com/us/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...
tudorconstantin 9y ago
What a great idea. I am renovating my house right now and I have to buy some paint for partially painting a facade. I could use such an app to be able to choose the paint color, in the store, as close as possible to the original one. Do you know of any such app for Android?
- fredley 9y ago
  Beware the effects of incident lighting on colour perception. As a human, you do a lot of processing you're not even aware of to normalise the colours you perceive. Cameras cannot do this (without calibration), so if the incandescent/flourescent/daylight/sunlight mix and intensity is different in the store to your house, you could end up with a very different shade.
  - cdubzzz 9y ago
    It's really interesting. My wife and I have done lots of painting at our house over the past year and we never get exactly what we expected. Most recently, we spent a long time selecting a light gray, which looked very much gray with a group of other grays. Then we painted the first portion of wall, stepped back and both said, "well, that is blue".
    - fredley 9y ago
      I'm guessing you looked at the paint in the shop under artificial lighting (which is more orange - making blues look more grey), then painted it in your house where there is more bluer daylight! Always buy the extortionately priced test samples. It's worth it!
  - kristiandupont 9y ago
    To convince yourself of this, just google "optical illusion color".
  - catoc 9y ago
    Matching the appearance of existing paint / colored surfaces is difficult. You need data on the variation of colour, intensity and reflectance as a function of viewing and illumination angles. Not something a mobile device can do. The device described in this paper can: (note: I am not affiliated; just out of interest) http://www.pro-lite.co.uk/File/RAD%20Imaging%20Sphere%20Paper%20(NPL%20ORM%2007%20Oxford%20V).pdf http://www.pro-lite.co.uk/File/RAD%20Imaging%20Sphere%20Pape... [Edit: spelling]
tompazourek 9y ago
Looks cool. I wanted to build something similar some time ago, but never got to it. My idea was that it would serve colorblind people so that they can check what color some things are. Interesting color names data can be downloaded here: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
camtarn 9y ago
Is there a story behind the name? It's a cool name, but it doesn't seem obvious at first glance. (Edit: cone cells! of course! cheers :) )
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pavlov 9y ago
  My guess: cone cells in the eye, responsible for color vision.
- _kush 9y ago
  There is actually a story behind the name. I am a colorblind designer and colorblindness is caused when you're missing some cone cells in your eyes. Since this app helps me see all the colors, I decided to name it Cone!
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    Does the app say out loud the colour name? If not - it would be a good feature for partially sighted users also.
speg 9y ago
Is there anything to covert hex codes to paint colors? Live, real word paint on the wall. That would be neat. I haven't looked at a paint can in a while, maybe it's as simple as rgb?
- pavlov 9y ago
  It's definitely not as simple as RGB. Displays use an additive color model (you start from black and add more light), whereas paints use a subtractive color model (you start from white and add pigment). The standard model for subtractive color is CMYK -- cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Calibrating RGB displays to offer a reasonable preview of CMYK color is quite tricky due to the completely different color space and dynamics. Wall paints are an additional step removed because you can't buy them in CMYK, and the vendors don't provide a mapping from their private color names into a standard CMYK space.
  - ygra 9y ago
    Neither is a good fit of describing colours in the real world, as they're dependent on the output device (in case of CMYK both the printer and the paper change the resulting colour). So a mapping of paints to CMYK or RGB would be rather meaningless.
    - pavlov 9y ago
      That's certainly true. But CMYK would be more useful because the commonly used CMYK spaces can represent a color gamut that's closer to the range of shades in the actual paints, whereas the commonly used RGB spaces are too limited. (A regular color printer can print a substantial range of colors that are aliased when represented in sRGB, i.e. you can't distinguish them on screen unless the preview is adjusted to compensate. This also happens the other way: many on-screen greens can't be printed without extra inks.)
- helb 9y ago
  There are multiple standards for this. - RAL – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAL_colour_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAL_colour_standard - Pantone – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone - some others, often with military roots (FS595, British Standard, …) Pantone has different charts for paper/textile prints etc. RAL is mostly used for paint. It's common to have RAL codes on spray cans or wall paint buckets here in Europe. There are tools to approximately convert RGB (and HSL and others) to these colors, eg. http://rgb.to/ http://rgb.to/. But since the color models and intended use are different, there are some colors with no equivalent. Pantone even provides RGB/CMYK mappings for applicable colors in their sample books: https://www.pantone.com/images/pages/19890/Pantone-Extended-Gamut-Guide-Proces-Colors.jpg https://www.pantone.com/images/pages/19890/Pantone-Extended-... There are also palletes for graphics software like Adobe Illustrator. But some colors look weird on the RGB display obviously. (Source: i worked as a backpack designer for years, we did a lot of pantone prints)
giann 9y ago
Great work !
specializeded 9y ago
It's so simple and pretty that it makes me sort of angry. Thanks for the inspiration (and app) Kushagra!
lawrencegs 9y ago
Question here, how do you put a name on the hex? Do you have a database that map each hex code to "limelight", "grey asparagus", etc ?
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  How else would it be done?
  - welpwelp 9y ago
    Using a RNN that makes up plausible names based on a training set of actual colors. I kinda hope that was a genuinely curious question and not an arrogant rhetoric one.
    - Scea91 9y ago
      Why RNN? I would probably settle for a nearest neighbour in Lab color space.
      - welpwelp 9y ago
        Because I'm no data scientist but I somewhat understand that a RNN can extrapolate a training set. Nearest neighbors are cool too!
        jheriko 9y ago
        your conception of RNN as a magic bullet is sorely mistaken. for something like a meaningful name for a colour requires far more learning, data and context than is reasonable...
        welpwelp 9y ago
        Welp
        50CNT 9y ago
welpwelp 9y ago
It's certainly worth its price but I wonder how many people would pay for it. Nice work! I like the design.
_kush 9y ago
Hi, HN! Really excited to share my little project here. Being a colorblind designer, it was often hard for me to figure the color names and decide which colors to use. Hence, I decided to make this app. Cone lets you pick colors in real time using the phone's camera. It lets you build color palettes while on the run, capturing and recording color for later comment/discussion, sending the colors to someone else quickly and efficiently, and of course translating a physical objects color to a usable set of information without having to get expensive colorimetric equipment. Really excited to hear feedback from you all :)
- deleted 9y ago
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- icantdrive55 9y ago
  I'm color bind too. I'm actually jealous I didn't think of this. I have been working in Krita lately, and I'm guessing on colors. Krita will give hexadecimal # of a particuliar color, but not a worded description of the color. This has so many potential uses--fashion websites for one. I can't go by the color on websites for the clothing; I need to look at the details for the written color. I usually just buy black, and people call me Jonny Cash. A therapist once asked me why I always wear black. Just too dissalusioned on so many levels to tell why. That was my last session. I imagine sites like The Gap would pay for a custom app incorporated into their site? Will I pay for this app? Maybe? It will be my first bought app. All these years, and I never gave Apple my CC, on principle. They might get it today though.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
  I like how you kept the site and dependencies simple. 34.7KB of js (~21 is mostly color definitions), and 4.2KB of css. Just FYI: 1. You could save ~15.75kb by minifying your JS/CSS (a bit nit-picky since your resources are a fraction of what most sites have) 2. The 1MB background image comes out to 570.6 KB through tinypng.com (47% off!). If lossless is more your thing, you could save about 5% by running it through something like imageoptim.
Zalastax 9y ago
Cool indeed! I had a similar need and created https://github.com/Zalastax/colornamer https://github.com/Zalastax/colornamer. Finding a good source of names was the hardest part so you might want to complement your list of colors with those in my list.
- floSchr 9y ago
  I've made almost the same thing :) https://colorna.me/ https://colorna.me/
  - Zalastax 9y ago
    Super nice! Had I just known about it earlier... We made some different choices, but the end result is quite close. It's a shame that the native html color picker is so bad, I wish I could have used it, but FlexiColorPicker is a delight to work with.
jheriko 9y ago
well done. this is a cool app. good luck charging for it though... if there is not a free one, some free-app loving developer might waste a couple of hours of his afternoon doing the same and shipping it for free.
woodylondon 9y ago
This is so cool - just bought! Great work.
gohome190 9y ago
Great app! Very small critique: at a quick glance to my home screen, the icon looks like an app in the download/install process.
milansuk 9y ago
Nice idea! I just can't figure out why is the size of app almost 30MB?
- sleepychu 9y ago
  Probably libs.
- shepardrtc 9y ago
  It said 14MB or so for me.
baxuz 9y ago
There's a PWA that does mostly the same, apart for the naming: https://use-the-platform.com/rainbow-explorer/ https://use-the-platform.com/rainbow-explorer/
p0nce 9y ago
Congratulations, looks very useful.
mattgecko 9y ago
You're underselling this hugely! $0.99 is far too cheap
- joeblau 9y ago
  I agree that it's too cheap, but that's the state of thee app store. There tons of other apps that do the same thing + more for free (I was building something like this to pick light colors with my HUE lights).
- qaz_plm 9y ago
  It was this price point that got me to buy it to try it out. If it were $1.99+ I probably wouldn't have. Psychological stuff...
  - developer2 9y ago
    Yep. It's a sad state we're in. It's just too risky to pay more for an app from a publisher who is not well-known. All too often, installing an app for $3-5+ is disappointing when you discover the app is not what you were expecting. I rarely pay for apps, simply because I'd have paid thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a single phone, only to uninstall 95% of apps after discovering it was not for me. Is an in-app purchase required to offer something tangible? Instead of using ads and offering an in-app purchase to remove ads, I'd love to see cheap apps (ie: free or $0.99, without ads) with options for in-app purchases - maybe $3, $5, $10, $20 - that are nothing more than a voluntary donation to pay more for an app I find worthwhile. If I could volunteer to pay more for apps after using them for an extended period of time (fully unlocked, no trial gimmicks), I'd likely have spent a lot more money than I have thus far. I won't pay thousands for a bunch of crappy used-once apps, but I'd pay a few hundred for the bundle of apps I've kept.
    - corobo 9y ago
      If I could get a refund if an app sucked I'd be infinitely more willing to try out random paid apps. Use the steam method if necessary, only auto-refund it if you've used it less than x hours
mattgecko 9y ago
You're underselling this hugely! $0.99 is far too cheap
xutopia 9y ago
I can't find it in the Canadian App Store.
- _kush 9y ago
  That's strange! Here's a direct link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cone-live-color-picker/id1221305627?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cone-live-color-picker/id122... I'll look into the issue.
mrmondo 9y ago
This is something I didn't know I needed for a long time, how has this not existed until now? It's so simple and truly is a delight to use. Thank you kind sir!
- petethepig 9y ago
  Adobe Color CC (now Adobe Capture CC) was released 4 years ago, in May 2013 https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1040200189 https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1040200189
timdafweak 9y ago
Bravo, a wonderful app indeed. I just see so many uses for it. And it is priced just right for it to pick up quickly. The app design is just wonderful - minimal and quite intuitive. Good luck!
lindskogen 9y ago
https://coneapp.io/?color=#156077 https://coneapp.io/?color=#156077 "Blue Stone, aka Green"?
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  Nope - it's a dull blue, with a _hint_ of green. FWIW, I don't know if I'm a tetrachromat or not, but I do have a very good colour detecting ability.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  Do all 16 million color combinations have names? That would be crazy!
  - JasonSage 9y ago
    Looks like it chooses from one of 1383 names. From [0] linked in the footer. 0: http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt
- BatFastard 9y ago
  Do all 16 million color combinations have names? That would be crazy!
- to3m 9y ago
  Perhaps it's using one of those luminance-from-RGB vectors somewhere in the calculation? That could overrate the contribution of green to the appearance.
jakemor 9y ago
Great name. Cones are the color receptors in our eyes concentrated in the fovea. Love it when names hve scientific meaning but remain simple ;)
hilti 9y ago
Great work and good luck with sales! Did you write it in Swift or Objective-C? BTW: just bought it! :-)
- _kush 9y ago
  Thank you for the purchase, I hope you have fun with it! I made it in Swift 3.
sAbakumoff 9y ago
The landing page is awesome! I wish the app was available for Android so, you know, 80% of smartphone owners could check it out.
- programmarchy 9y ago
  You mean the 80% of smartphone users who are much less likely to purchase apps? [1] Could be a chicken-and-egg problem, but still. [1] https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/app-annie-index-market-q1-2016/ https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/app-annie-index-market-...
  - sAbakumoff 9y ago
    Oh, so Cone app is NOT free?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kiro 9y ago
      Did anyone say it was free?
      - sAbakumoff 9y ago
        I thought that everything that is posted to Show HN should be available for free so that everyone could play with it.
- no_news_is 9y ago
  Here you go: https://github.com/dektar/ColorNamer https://github.com/dektar/ColorNamer
qaz_plm 9y ago
Not sure how many people this affects but clicking on the download button from the website on Chrome (iOS) takes you to an iTunes page that doesn't contain the app. Clicking on it via Safari (iOS) sends you to the app store to the app proper. Video of the issue in Chrome (iOS) - http://imgur.com/ntTmynl http://imgur.com/ntTmynl
- granda 9y ago
  If you don't mind me asking how'd you screen cast this so well?
  - qaz_plm 9y ago
    Tethered the iPhone to a Mac and used Quicktime to capture/record the device input (New Movie Recording then change the camera input to the iPhone), export as MOV (720p).
    - arjie 9y ago
      This is a serious pro tip. I didn't know this was possible. Thank you!
      - ecesena 9y ago
        It's also great for presentations/live demos!
- _kush 9y ago
  Thank you so much for reporting that. I just copied the link from my iTunes connect account which only has one additional parameter "?ls=1" that seems to work in Chrome. Does anyone know what that parameter means?
  - qaz_plm 9y ago
    This article is a couple of years old but it appears LS is Load Store: http://blog.geni.us/2013/12/06/parameter-cheat-sheet-for-itunes-and-app-store-links/ http://blog.geni.us/2013/12/06/parameter-cheat-sheet-for-itu...
protectedvoid 9y ago
Am I just too stupid to see the grander idea of this app or why does it get so much attention and top position on HN? It's just a color picker on camera images or what did I miss? It's very well done I agree but still seems remarkably trivial. Why all the fuzz?
- catoc 9y ago
  Isn't it largely just luck? This was posted a few weeks ago, and went nowhere. Now posted again it reaches the top because a few people upvote it early on. It will also float down again pretty quickly. Trivial but fun - a few minutes of fame - well deserved
  - bbcbasic 9y ago
    Yup it's luck
- bartonm 9y ago
  Compared online equivalents 'Snap It' that help color identification which require taking a picture and uploading to their site. This is really helpful in identifying colors on the go. The simplicity of this app is where it sings. It's easily monetized by connecting app to paint suppliers like Sherwin Williams, Home Depot, or Lowes.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- appetizer 9y ago
  You are just missing how things surface on HN
rglover 9y ago
Thanks, now I'm that guy in public holding up my phone to stuff. Kidding, this is really great :)
archit3cture 9y ago
Great idea ! I wish I had this idea after working on a website that tries to map RGB colors to paint names. An example of result with the Limeade color - http://en.tacolor.com/hex/6fb400/ http://en.tacolor.com/hex/6fb400/ This does the distance check in the CIELAB color space.
chrisbrandow 9y ago
Very nicely done. I would recommend either a simple tooltip popover for each button on first startup, or a simple help button somewhere. It took me a while to realize/notice that the snowflake button was to freeze the frame. I wouldn't want to clutter the elegant simplicity of this app, but it was confusing to me initially.
shepardrtc 9y ago
I've actually been looking for something like this. I only rarely ever need to figure out what a color is, but its always been difficult. This app makes it much easier. Thank you!
johnwheeler 9y ago
This is one of those apps you look at and think, "Oh yeah, this should exist" Seems obvious in hindsight.
zod50 9y ago
i must say the name, the website, the app's UI all look pretty neat. you seem more of a designer than a developer, may I ask you, what's your expertise?
- _kush 9y ago
  Thank you! I am an interaction designer but I picked up development (frontend on web) early on and have been doing both since.
  - statictype 9y ago
    I see that you're based out of Pune. Are you looking for a job? :)
jordache 9y ago
So this app is using the device's camera? How does it account for the fact that camera's perception of color is often no where as similar as our eye? Or is the intent for the user to see the world through the app and find colors that look appealing on the screen?
yoleg 9y ago
Looks great! Really love the landing page! How long did the app take you to build?
- _kush 9y ago
  Thank you! It took me about a month to build this from scratch. I am familiar with JavaScript so that helped me in picking up Swift quickly.
  - yoleg 9y ago
    Being familiar with JavaScript did you consider something like React Native over Swift?
    - swah 9y ago
      I wonder if this is the kind of app you can "never" properly write in a cross-platform way...
    - _kush 9y ago
      I actually started with React Native but soon realized the limitations and switched to Swift. Learning Swift and shipping the app was definitely faster than trying to figure out how to do X in react native and make it work properly. I think React Native is good if you're building database apps but when you want to leverage the device capabilities like camera, Bluetooth etc, going native is the best option.
programmarchy 9y ago
This is nicely designed. Love the simplicity and the navigation is a neat twist.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
skunkworks 9y ago
Nice job! When I started iOS development, I made a similar app for my portfolio. I still use it occasionally, since I'm also colorblind. It's been a while since I updated it, but it still works aside from the occasional Core Data crash because I didn't know any better back then: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colormyworld-color-picker-and-eyedropper-for-your-camera/id692361549?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colormyworld-color-picker-an...
jrlocke 9y ago
Great looking app. I'm an iOS dev, and I need to implement a similar color picker for picking a color within an image in my app. Any tips or example code you can point me to for how to performantly target a screen pixel and get the hex?.
huangc10 9y ago
This is very well done and looks beautiful. What an iPhone app is made to look like. For everyone who is wondering how he got the hex, and names, etc. there are links in the bottom of the coneapp.io page. Here are the links: > The Resene RGB Values List is copyrighted to Resene Paints Ltd, 2001. Name That Color by Chirag Mehta Resene RGB Values List: http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt Resene Paints Ltd: http://www.resene.co.nz/ http://www.resene.co.nz/ Name That Color: http://chir.ag/projects/ntc/ http://chir.ag/projects/ntc/
Uffizi 9y ago
This is wonderful, thank you! I appreciate that there is a subgrouping color such as "blue" under the hex codes, it really helps for colors with names that are not related to the base color.
kirualex 9y ago
Shameless plug of my app which is very similar: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qolor-fast-color-grabber/id973492333?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qolor-fast-color-grabber/id9...
- corobo 9y ago
  Ouch that review
  - kirualex 9y ago
    yeah I guess some people are pretty stupid ^^
LeoNatan25 9y ago
Very cool! A feature suggestion for the future: add a Watch app! That shouldn't be hard to implement at all, and would be a killer feature, I believe. A quick color browse from a pic in the gallery.
tn135 9y ago
Loved the same.
calsy 9y ago
Love it fantastic app. +1 purchase from down under.
bobbles 9y ago
I have zero reason to use this but i love it - thanks!
kartickv 9y ago
Would you be interested in supporting color space conversions for Apple developers? Like how does UIColor(displayP3Red:0.7 green:0.8 blue:0.4) map to extended sRGB? Standard sRGB? If you give you an sRGB color, what's the saturated version of that color in P3? What's the 50% desaturated version of a given color? Etc.
RhodaLs 9y ago
You made something very simple and beautiful. I bought it right away, and had fun building a palette of the Kansas sunset while my dogs ran through the woods. I know I could do the same thing just by taking a photo and extracting a palette later, but I really liked the experience of doing it in the moment. Just one request: I'd love a way to export a bunch of colors at once. Is there a way in the current interface? If not, please consider it for a future update.
- _kush 9y ago
  I am really happy you liked using the app. Exporting multiple colors at once is a great idea! I've added it to my roadmap and will be implementing it very soon. Thank you!
rrm1977 9y ago
Congratulation for your new app. Adobe has a similar free app called Adobe Color. However, your app is better as it clearly define the color name and code. You may like to check their app and add a color scheme feature. Very good work!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

418 points by _kush 9y ago

taspeotis 9y ago

I really liked the landing page, especially the outline of the iPhone with an example of the app running inside of it.

zytek 9y ago
+1 to that, landing page is beautiful, another +1 for choosing Iceland <3
oblio 9y ago
The landing page was really cool. A minor suggestion I have: could the animation be slowed down a bit? I was scanning the page and the cursor moving around was a bit annoying. I think that the way the application works will still be clear if the animation plays at half of its current speed.
- penpapersw 9y ago
  I thought it was just the right speed.
  - oblio 9y ago
    Another option: maybe stop the loop after 1 cycle? Or add a pause between cycles? :)
    - Kiro 9y ago
      Definitely not stop it after 1 cycle. I watched it over and over many times. Please no pause either. I really really like it the way it is now. One of the best demos I've seen.
loceng 9y ago
Not sure if this would have been inspiration, however Samsung currently has an ad campaign out to showcase how much screen surface area there is; https://img.us.news.samsung.com/us/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/21150031/013_GalaxyS8_Blue.jpg https://img.us.news.samsung.com/us/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...

tudorconstantin 9y ago

What a great idea. I am renovating my house right now and I have to buy some paint for partially painting a facade. I could use such an app to be able to choose the paint color, in the store, as close as possible to the original one. Do you know of any such app for Android?

fredley 9y ago
Beware the effects of incident lighting on colour perception. As a human, you do a lot of processing you're not even aware of to normalise the colours you perceive. Cameras cannot do this (without calibration), so if the incandescent/flourescent/daylight/sunlight mix and intensity is different in the store to your house, you could end up with a very different shade.
- cdubzzz 9y ago
  It's really interesting. My wife and I have done lots of painting at our house over the past year and we never get exactly what we expected. Most recently, we spent a long time selecting a light gray, which looked very much gray with a group of other grays. Then we painted the first portion of wall, stepped back and both said, "well, that is blue".
  - fredley 9y ago
    I'm guessing you looked at the paint in the shop under artificial lighting (which is more orange - making blues look more grey), then painted it in your house where there is more bluer daylight! Always buy the extortionately priced test samples. It's worth it!
- kristiandupont 9y ago
  To convince yourself of this, just google "optical illusion color".
- catoc 9y ago
  Matching the appearance of existing paint / colored surfaces is difficult. You need data on the variation of colour, intensity and reflectance as a function of viewing and illumination angles. Not something a mobile device can do. The device described in this paper can: (note: I am not affiliated; just out of interest) http://www.pro-lite.co.uk/File/RAD%20Imaging%20Sphere%20Paper%20(NPL%20ORM%2007%20Oxford%20V).pdf http://www.pro-lite.co.uk/File/RAD%20Imaging%20Sphere%20Pape... [Edit: spelling]

tompazourek 9y ago

Looks cool. I wanted to build something similar some time ago, but never got to it. My idea was that it would serve colorblind people so that they can check what color some things are. Interesting color names data can be downloaded here: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

camtarn 9y ago

Is there a story behind the name? It's a cool name, but it doesn't seem obvious at first glance. (Edit: cone cells! of course! cheers :) )

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 9y ago
My guess: cone cells in the eye, responsible for color vision.
_kush 9y ago
There is actually a story behind the name. I am a colorblind designer and colorblindness is caused when you're missing some cone cells in your eyes. Since this app helps me see all the colors, I decided to name it Cone!
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  Does the app say out loud the colour name? If not - it would be a good feature for partially sighted users also.

speg 9y ago

Is there anything to covert hex codes to paint colors? Live, real word paint on the wall. That would be neat. I haven't looked at a paint can in a while, maybe it's as simple as rgb?

pavlov 9y ago
It's definitely not as simple as RGB. Displays use an additive color model (you start from black and add more light), whereas paints use a subtractive color model (you start from white and add pigment). The standard model for subtractive color is CMYK -- cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Calibrating RGB displays to offer a reasonable preview of CMYK color is quite tricky due to the completely different color space and dynamics. Wall paints are an additional step removed because you can't buy them in CMYK, and the vendors don't provide a mapping from their private color names into a standard CMYK space.
- ygra 9y ago
  Neither is a good fit of describing colours in the real world, as they're dependent on the output device (in case of CMYK both the printer and the paper change the resulting colour). So a mapping of paints to CMYK or RGB would be rather meaningless.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    That's certainly true. But CMYK would be more useful because the commonly used CMYK spaces can represent a color gamut that's closer to the range of shades in the actual paints, whereas the commonly used RGB spaces are too limited. (A regular color printer can print a substantial range of colors that are aliased when represented in sRGB, i.e. you can't distinguish them on screen unless the preview is adjusted to compensate. This also happens the other way: many on-screen greens can't be printed without extra inks.)
helb 9y ago
There are multiple standards for this. - RAL – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAL_colour_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAL_colour_standard - Pantone – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone - some others, often with military roots (FS595, British Standard, …) Pantone has different charts for paper/textile prints etc. RAL is mostly used for paint. It's common to have RAL codes on spray cans or wall paint buckets here in Europe. There are tools to approximately convert RGB (and HSL and others) to these colors, eg. http://rgb.to/ http://rgb.to/. But since the color models and intended use are different, there are some colors with no equivalent. Pantone even provides RGB/CMYK mappings for applicable colors in their sample books: https://www.pantone.com/images/pages/19890/Pantone-Extended-Gamut-Guide-Proces-Colors.jpg https://www.pantone.com/images/pages/19890/Pantone-Extended-... There are also palletes for graphics software like Adobe Illustrator. But some colors look weird on the RGB display obviously. (Source: i worked as a backpack designer for years, we did a lot of pantone prints)

giann 9y ago

Great work !

specializeded 9y ago

It's so simple and pretty that it makes me sort of angry. Thanks for the inspiration (and app) Kushagra!

lawrencegs 9y ago

Question here, how do you put a name on the hex? Do you have a database that map each hex code to "limelight", "grey asparagus", etc ?

miguelrochefort 9y ago
How else would it be done?
- welpwelp 9y ago
  Using a RNN that makes up plausible names based on a training set of actual colors. I kinda hope that was a genuinely curious question and not an arrogant rhetoric one.
  - Scea91 9y ago
    Why RNN? I would probably settle for a nearest neighbour in Lab color space.
    - welpwelp 9y ago
      Because I'm no data scientist but I somewhat understand that a RNN can extrapolate a training set. Nearest neighbors are cool too!
      - jheriko 9y ago
        your conception of RNN as a magic bullet is sorely mistaken. for something like a meaningful name for a colour requires far more learning, data and context than is reasonable...
        welpwelp 9y ago
        Welp
      - 50CNT 9y ago

welpwelp 9y ago

It's certainly worth its price but I wonder how many people would pay for it. Nice work! I like the design.

_kush 9y ago

Hi, HN! Really excited to share my little project here. Being a colorblind designer, it was often hard for me to figure the color names and decide which colors to use. Hence, I decided to make this app. Cone lets you pick colors in real time using the phone's camera. It lets you build color palettes while on the run, capturing and recording color for later comment/discussion, sending the colors to someone else quickly and efficiently, and of course translating a physical objects color to a usable set of information without having to get expensive colorimetric equipment. Really excited to hear feedback from you all :)

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icantdrive55 9y ago
I'm color bind too. I'm actually jealous I didn't think of this. I have been working in Krita lately, and I'm guessing on colors. Krita will give hexadecimal # of a particuliar color, but not a worded description of the color. This has so many potential uses--fashion websites for one. I can't go by the color on websites for the clothing; I need to look at the details for the written color. I usually just buy black, and people call me Jonny Cash. A therapist once asked me why I always wear black. Just too dissalusioned on so many levels to tell why. That was my last session. I imagine sites like The Gap would pay for a custom app incorporated into their site? Will I pay for this app? Maybe? It will be my first bought app. All these years, and I never gave Apple my CC, on principle. They might get it today though.
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SparkyMcUnicorn 9y ago
I like how you kept the site and dependencies simple. 34.7KB of js (~21 is mostly color definitions), and 4.2KB of css. Just FYI: 1. You could save ~15.75kb by minifying your JS/CSS (a bit nit-picky since your resources are a fraction of what most sites have) 2. The 1MB background image comes out to 570.6 KB through tinypng.com (47% off!). If lossless is more your thing, you could save about 5% by running it through something like imageoptim.

Zalastax 9y ago

Cool indeed! I had a similar need and created https://github.com/Zalastax/colornamer https://github.com/Zalastax/colornamer. Finding a good source of names was the hardest part so you might want to complement your list of colors with those in my list.

floSchr 9y ago
I've made almost the same thing :) https://colorna.me/ https://colorna.me/
- Zalastax 9y ago
  Super nice! Had I just known about it earlier... We made some different choices, but the end result is quite close. It's a shame that the native html color picker is so bad, I wish I could have used it, but FlexiColorPicker is a delight to work with.

jheriko 9y ago

well done. this is a cool app. good luck charging for it though... if there is not a free one, some free-app loving developer might waste a couple of hours of his afternoon doing the same and shipping it for free.

woodylondon 9y ago

This is so cool - just bought! Great work.

gohome190 9y ago

Great app! Very small critique: at a quick glance to my home screen, the icon looks like an app in the download/install process.

milansuk 9y ago

Nice idea! I just can't figure out why is the size of app almost 30MB?

sleepychu 9y ago
Probably libs.
shepardrtc 9y ago
It said 14MB or so for me.

baxuz 9y ago

There's a PWA that does mostly the same, apart for the naming: https://use-the-platform.com/rainbow-explorer/ https://use-the-platform.com/rainbow-explorer/

p0nce 9y ago

Congratulations, looks very useful.

mattgecko 9y ago

You're underselling this hugely! $0.99 is far too cheap

joeblau 9y ago
I agree that it's too cheap, but that's the state of thee app store. There tons of other apps that do the same thing + more for free (I was building something like this to pick light colors with my HUE lights).
qaz_plm 9y ago
It was this price point that got me to buy it to try it out. If it were $1.99+ I probably wouldn't have. Psychological stuff...
- developer2 9y ago
  Yep. It's a sad state we're in. It's just too risky to pay more for an app from a publisher who is not well-known. All too often, installing an app for $3-5+ is disappointing when you discover the app is not what you were expecting. I rarely pay for apps, simply because I'd have paid thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a single phone, only to uninstall 95% of apps after discovering it was not for me. Is an in-app purchase required to offer something tangible? Instead of using ads and offering an in-app purchase to remove ads, I'd love to see cheap apps (ie: free or $0.99, without ads) with options for in-app purchases - maybe $3, $5, $10, $20 - that are nothing more than a voluntary donation to pay more for an app I find worthwhile. If I could volunteer to pay more for apps after using them for an extended period of time (fully unlocked, no trial gimmicks), I'd likely have spent a lot more money than I have thus far. I won't pay thousands for a bunch of crappy used-once apps, but I'd pay a few hundred for the bundle of apps I've kept.
  - corobo 9y ago
    If I could get a refund if an app sucked I'd be infinitely more willing to try out random paid apps. Use the steam method if necessary, only auto-refund it if you've used it less than x hours

mattgecko 9y ago

You're underselling this hugely! $0.99 is far too cheap

xutopia 9y ago

I can't find it in the Canadian App Store.

_kush 9y ago
That's strange! Here's a direct link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cone-live-color-picker/id1221305627?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cone-live-color-picker/id122... I'll look into the issue.

mrmondo 9y ago

This is something I didn't know I needed for a long time, how has this not existed until now? It's so simple and truly is a delight to use. Thank you kind sir!

petethepig 9y ago
Adobe Color CC (now Adobe Capture CC) was released 4 years ago, in May 2013 https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1040200189 https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1040200189

timdafweak 9y ago

Bravo, a wonderful app indeed. I just see so many uses for it. And it is priced just right for it to pick up quickly. The app design is just wonderful - minimal and quite intuitive. Good luck!

lindskogen 9y ago

https://coneapp.io/?color=#156077 https://coneapp.io/?color=#156077 "Blue Stone, aka Green"?

Jaruzel 9y ago
Nope - it's a dull blue, with a _hint_ of green. FWIW, I don't know if I'm a tetrachromat or not, but I do have a very good colour detecting ability.
BatFastard 9y ago
Do all 16 million color combinations have names? That would be crazy!
- JasonSage 9y ago
  Looks like it chooses from one of 1383 names. From [0] linked in the footer. 0: http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt
BatFastard 9y ago
Do all 16 million color combinations have names? That would be crazy!
to3m 9y ago
Perhaps it's using one of those luminance-from-RGB vectors somewhere in the calculation? That could overrate the contribution of green to the appearance.

jakemor 9y ago

Great name. Cones are the color receptors in our eyes concentrated in the fovea. Love it when names hve scientific meaning but remain simple ;)

hilti 9y ago

Great work and good luck with sales! Did you write it in Swift or Objective-C? BTW: just bought it! :-)

_kush 9y ago
Thank you for the purchase, I hope you have fun with it! I made it in Swift 3.

sAbakumoff 9y ago

The landing page is awesome! I wish the app was available for Android so, you know, 80% of smartphone owners could check it out.

programmarchy 9y ago
You mean the 80% of smartphone users who are much less likely to purchase apps? [1] Could be a chicken-and-egg problem, but still. [1] https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/app-annie-index-market-q1-2016/ https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/app-annie-index-market-...
- sAbakumoff 9y ago
  Oh, so Cone app is NOT free?
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - Kiro 9y ago
    Did anyone say it was free?
    - sAbakumoff 9y ago
      I thought that everything that is posted to Show HN should be available for free so that everyone could play with it.
no_news_is 9y ago
Here you go: https://github.com/dektar/ColorNamer https://github.com/dektar/ColorNamer

qaz_plm 9y ago

Not sure how many people this affects but clicking on the download button from the website on Chrome (iOS) takes you to an iTunes page that doesn't contain the app. Clicking on it via Safari (iOS) sends you to the app store to the app proper. Video of the issue in Chrome (iOS) - http://imgur.com/ntTmynl http://imgur.com/ntTmynl

granda 9y ago
If you don't mind me asking how'd you screen cast this so well?
- qaz_plm 9y ago
  Tethered the iPhone to a Mac and used Quicktime to capture/record the device input (New Movie Recording then change the camera input to the iPhone), export as MOV (720p).
  - arjie 9y ago
    This is a serious pro tip. I didn't know this was possible. Thank you!
    - ecesena 9y ago
      It's also great for presentations/live demos!
_kush 9y ago
Thank you so much for reporting that. I just copied the link from my iTunes connect account which only has one additional parameter "?ls=1" that seems to work in Chrome. Does anyone know what that parameter means?
- qaz_plm 9y ago
  This article is a couple of years old but it appears LS is Load Store: http://blog.geni.us/2013/12/06/parameter-cheat-sheet-for-itunes-and-app-store-links/ http://blog.geni.us/2013/12/06/parameter-cheat-sheet-for-itu...

protectedvoid 9y ago

Am I just too stupid to see the grander idea of this app or why does it get so much attention and top position on HN? It's just a color picker on camera images or what did I miss? It's very well done I agree but still seems remarkably trivial. Why all the fuzz?

catoc 9y ago
Isn't it largely just luck? This was posted a few weeks ago, and went nowhere. Now posted again it reaches the top because a few people upvote it early on. It will also float down again pretty quickly. Trivial but fun - a few minutes of fame - well deserved
- bbcbasic 9y ago
  Yup it's luck
bartonm 9y ago
Compared online equivalents 'Snap It' that help color identification which require taking a picture and uploading to their site. This is really helpful in identifying colors on the go. The simplicity of this app is where it sings. It's easily monetized by connecting app to paint suppliers like Sherwin Williams, Home Depot, or Lowes.
- deleted 9y ago
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appetizer 9y ago
You are just missing how things surface on HN

rglover 9y ago

Thanks, now I'm that guy in public holding up my phone to stuff. Kidding, this is really great :)

archit3cture 9y ago

Great idea ! I wish I had this idea after working on a website that tries to map RGB colors to paint names. An example of result with the Limeade color - http://en.tacolor.com/hex/6fb400/ http://en.tacolor.com/hex/6fb400/ This does the distance check in the CIELAB color space.

chrisbrandow 9y ago

Very nicely done. I would recommend either a simple tooltip popover for each button on first startup, or a simple help button somewhere. It took me a while to realize/notice that the snowflake button was to freeze the frame. I wouldn't want to clutter the elegant simplicity of this app, but it was confusing to me initially.

shepardrtc 9y ago

I've actually been looking for something like this. I only rarely ever need to figure out what a color is, but its always been difficult. This app makes it much easier. Thank you!

johnwheeler 9y ago

This is one of those apps you look at and think, "Oh yeah, this should exist" Seems obvious in hindsight.

zod50 9y ago

i must say the name, the website, the app's UI all look pretty neat. you seem more of a designer than a developer, may I ask you, what's your expertise?

_kush 9y ago
Thank you! I am an interaction designer but I picked up development (frontend on web) early on and have been doing both since.
- statictype 9y ago
  I see that you're based out of Pune. Are you looking for a job? :)

jordache 9y ago

So this app is using the device's camera? How does it account for the fact that camera's perception of color is often no where as similar as our eye? Or is the intent for the user to see the world through the app and find colors that look appealing on the screen?

yoleg 9y ago

Looks great! Really love the landing page! How long did the app take you to build?

_kush 9y ago
Thank you! It took me about a month to build this from scratch. I am familiar with JavaScript so that helped me in picking up Swift quickly.
- yoleg 9y ago
  Being familiar with JavaScript did you consider something like React Native over Swift?
  - swah 9y ago
    I wonder if this is the kind of app you can "never" properly write in a cross-platform way...
  - _kush 9y ago
    I actually started with React Native but soon realized the limitations and switched to Swift. Learning Swift and shipping the app was definitely faster than trying to figure out how to do X in react native and make it work properly. I think React Native is good if you're building database apps but when you want to leverage the device capabilities like camera, Bluetooth etc, going native is the best option.

programmarchy 9y ago

This is nicely designed. Love the simplicity and the navigation is a neat twist.

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skunkworks 9y ago

Nice job! When I started iOS development, I made a similar app for my portfolio. I still use it occasionally, since I'm also colorblind. It's been a while since I updated it, but it still works aside from the occasional Core Data crash because I didn't know any better back then: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colormyworld-color-picker-and-eyedropper-for-your-camera/id692361549?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colormyworld-color-picker-an...

jrlocke 9y ago

Great looking app. I'm an iOS dev, and I need to implement a similar color picker for picking a color within an image in my app. Any tips or example code you can point me to for how to performantly target a screen pixel and get the hex?.

huangc10 9y ago

This is very well done and looks beautiful. What an iPhone app is made to look like. For everyone who is wondering how he got the hex, and names, etc. there are links in the bottom of the coneapp.io page. Here are the links: > The Resene RGB Values List is copyrighted to Resene Paints Ltd, 2001. Name That Color by Chirag Mehta Resene RGB Values List: http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/resenecolours.txt Resene Paints Ltd: http://www.resene.co.nz/ http://www.resene.co.nz/ Name That Color: http://chir.ag/projects/ntc/ http://chir.ag/projects/ntc/

Uffizi 9y ago

This is wonderful, thank you! I appreciate that there is a subgrouping color such as "blue" under the hex codes, it really helps for colors with names that are not related to the base color.

kirualex 9y ago

Shameless plug of my app which is very similar: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qolor-fast-color-grabber/id973492333?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qolor-fast-color-grabber/id9...

corobo 9y ago
Ouch that review
- kirualex 9y ago
  yeah I guess some people are pretty stupid ^^

LeoNatan25 9y ago

Very cool! A feature suggestion for the future: add a Watch app! That shouldn't be hard to implement at all, and would be a killer feature, I believe. A quick color browse from a pic in the gallery.

tn135 9y ago

Loved the same.

calsy 9y ago

Love it fantastic app. +1 purchase from down under.

bobbles 9y ago

I have zero reason to use this but i love it - thanks!

kartickv 9y ago

Would you be interested in supporting color space conversions for Apple developers? Like how does UIColor(displayP3Red:0.7 green:0.8 blue:0.4) map to extended sRGB? Standard sRGB? If you give you an sRGB color, what's the saturated version of that color in P3? What's the 50% desaturated version of a given color? Etc.

RhodaLs 9y ago

You made something very simple and beautiful. I bought it right away, and had fun building a palette of the Kansas sunset while my dogs ran through the woods. I know I could do the same thing just by taking a photo and extracting a palette later, but I really liked the experience of doing it in the moment. Just one request: I'd love a way to export a bunch of colors at once. Is there a way in the current interface? If not, please consider it for a future update.

_kush 9y ago
I am really happy you liked using the app. Exporting multiple colors at once is a great idea! I've added it to my roadmap and will be implementing it very soon. Thank you!

rrm1977 9y ago

Congratulation for your new app. Adobe has a similar free app called Adobe Color. However, your app is better as it clearly define the color name and code. You may like to check their app and add a color scheme feature. Very good work!

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