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Show HN: An iPhone app that lets you pick colors and identify PANTONE colors
- _kush 6y agoHi HN, A couple of years back, I posted the initial version of Cone on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14254357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14254357) and had received a great response. Cone is a smart color picker tool for the iPhone, which is delightful and very easy-to-use. Not only that, but it also lets you organize colors into buckets and identify PANTONE colors of the object around you (super helpful for interior, graphic, or package designers). Cone is licensed by PANTONE, so it stays updated with all the new colors they release on time. Another feature I'd like to highlight is the ability to identify hues of the colors around you. As a colorblind designer, it's super helpful for me to know whether a color is red or green just by pointing my phone's camera at it. Since the initial version, a lot has changed and here's what the new version brings: - Ability to identify PANTONE colors - Pick colors from the images in the photo gallery - Collect and organize colors into buckets - Adjust the color temperature with a neutral grey card for improved accuracy - New design - Apple Watch companion app - and many under the hood improvements. I would love to hear what everyone thinks about it!
- amelius 6y agoCan I use this to calibrate colors on screen? Can it register colors from an LCD panel?
- dgellow 6y agoWhat is "pantone"? That's missing from the website.
- Finnucane 6y agoIt's a palette of predefined colors. It's been used by the printing industry for many years, everyone who does any kind of professional graphic arts knows what it is. You can just tell the press operator "give me Pantone 68C" and they will know exactly what to give you. https://www.pantone.com/ https://www.pantone.com/
- dgellow 6y agoThanks
- amelius 6y agoAlso missing is: what is a "color"? It might sound like a stupid question, but once you start thinking about it, it's not so simple. For example if you take a color and change the intensity of the light by a factor 2, is it the same color? Also due to overlapping spectra of cones in the human retina, different spectra can generate the same perception of color. Et cetera.
- kaesar14 6y agoI'd assume that with something like intensity that as long as the "ratios" of "RGB" values so to speak stay the same, your brain would interpret it as the same color, but that's my thought!
- amelius 6y agoProbably not true. Different shades of gray have (more or less) the same RGB ratios, but there exists a wide variety of PANTONE numbers for different shades of gray. (Simply put).
- brudgers 6y agoIn typical technical contexts, 'color' usually gets it's meaning from CIE 1931 or a derivative of it. The science of human color perception is colorimetry. Photometry is the science of human perception of brightness. Philosophical skepticism deals with the shortcomings of this approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorimetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorimetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photometry_(optics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photometry_(optics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
- jinglebells 6y agoIt's not the same color, no. Brown doesn't exist. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU
- ksec 6y agoThis may be a stupid question, considering PANTONE sells a ridiculously expensive devices for similar purpose. Would someday PANTONE revoke the license so we could no longer use it?
- _kush 6y agoCone is licensed for more than two years now, and I am in the process of renewing the license for another three years. So, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
- colejohnson66 6y agoCurious. How much does it cost to license?
- _kush 6y agoI can't share the exact details due to NDA, but instead of a fixed fee, it's a royalty-based license. So I pay x% to Pantone on every sale.
- lstamour 6y agoSmall suggestions (just based on the website copy): consider supporting other colour spaces, like Display-P3, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB, CIE... not sure what the source data from the camera can tell you though. LCH color picking based on CIE might also be useful http://lea.verou.me/2020/04/lch-colors-in-css-what-why-and-how/ http://lea.verou.me/2020/04/lch-colors-in-css-what-why-and-h... It’s worth pointing out that Pantone generally only matches print colours, and labels digital representations seemingly exclusively in sRGB, not wider colour spaces. https://www.pantone.com/color-intelligence/articles/technical/what-are-your-color-spaces https://www.pantone.com/color-intelligence/articles/technica... for the sRGB chart. Here’s an example exception: https://www.nanosysinc.com/blog/2012/12/11/color-of-the-year-for-2013-falls-outside-srgb-gamut https://www.nanosysinc.com/blog/2012/12/11/color-of-the-year... Despite this, it has an sRGB hex value, so I’m not sure what to make of it. https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/17-5641-TCX https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/17-5641-TCX It seems odd that Pantone lists these color values without listing absolute or relative values by named color space...
- michaelt 6y agoHow do you compensate for lighting conditions and differences between different phones' cameras when identifying pantone colours? I'd expect Pantone to be precious about that sort of thing, as accurate reproduction is important to them - right?
- bastijn 6y agoUser of initial version of the app here. This was my main issue with the app. Lighting conditions influenced the shot color significantly. Curious to learn from the author if the app tries to compensate in any way, and if that has been improved in V2.
- jamil7 6y agoWell done, website looks great! I will check out the app when I get a chance
- anfractuosity 6y agoThat sounds neat! I'm just wondering how much lighting affects its decision? Edit: just saw you mention about a grey card too, for calibration which sounds cool
- rathel 6y agoThis doesn't solve the issue of metamerism, though.
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- wdb 6y agoSounds like a great app, if it would also map PANTONe colors with RAL colours and we are done :)
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- _kush 6y agoNice suggestion. Seems like RAL is equivalent to Pantone but in Europe. I’ll look into its licensing and implement it if it’s not much of a headache :)
- jschwartzi 6y agoRAL is often used in manufacturing. Our powder coater used RAL colors for example.
- Udo_Schmitz 6y agoRAL and HKS are German color systems, the first dating back to the 1920s and the latter to the 1960s. Edit: love the app!
- wdb 6y agoRAL is often use for paint. E.g. if you want to paint your building in Pantone you normally get it converted.
- bakli 6y agoBeen using this for a month, the app is very well designed, and $5 is nothing compared to joy I get by collecting colours during commute and sharing the exact code when I am trying to design with physical world as an inspiration.
- _kush 6y agoThank you!
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- tpetry 6y agoWhat i hate about every color picker is that its picking one exact color. If your‘re looking at a gradient every pixel will be different, but i want sometimes get an average of the color.
- _kush 6y agoI faced the same problem, and hence Cone averages out the color inside the inner circle of the picker.
- KMnO4 6y agoIt’s $5 for the app, which the website fails to mention.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cschmidt 6y agoI see $3.99, not $5.
- colejohnson66 6y agoOP didn’t mention what country they’re in. Maybe their dollar is slightly less valuable (like the Canadian dollar)? Cause it’s $3.99 in the US, so CAD$4.99 would make sense (USD$4.99 is CAD$5.60)
- asow92 6y agoHere's a free comment. Enjoy!
- wilg 6y agoHow do you know the price then?
- fwr 6y agoNice! Interesting you were able to agree on licensing with PANTONE®, considering they sell a (very underwhelming) hardware device called CAPSURE™ that has a similar premise: https://www.pantone.com/products/color-control-tools/capsure https://www.pantone.com/products/color-control-tools/capsure
- justusthane 6y agoSuper cool! Purchased. This may be beyond the scope of the project, but it would be cool if it could create buckets from a photo by automatically pulling out complementary and contrasting colors.
- _kush 6y agoThank you. I had actually implemented this feature (which worked by extracting 5 dominant colors from an image or the camera feed) but I couldn't figure out the best experience for it to go with the manual picking of colors. I am working on redesigning it and I'll add it as soon as I perfect the experience.
- beobab 6y agoThe website says: "accurately identifies upto ten Pantone® colors" What is the ten referring to? Total times you can use it?
- _kush 6y agoWhen you see the color details, it will show ten Pantone colors (five from the Coated and Uncoated guides each) matching that color, in the order of their match %.
- beobab 6y agoNice. Bought it and will try it out.
- derflipster 6y agoI also didn’t understand while reading it on the website. Probably worth rephrasing in order to make it clear.
- _kush 6y agoUpdated the copy to make it clear.
- tpowell 6y agoJust playing with it for 2min I can already tell it’s easily worth $3.99 for me. I love the UI—well done.
- gnicholas 6y agoIs it common for Show HN posts to be for paid products? I’ve not seen any/many of these in the years I’ve been on here, but I wonder what others think. I’ve seen waitlists before, but paid apps seem like a different thing.
- deepspace 6y agoYes, I noticed that too. I don't recall ever seeing a paid product promoted like this. I.m.o. this kind of post comes very, very close to the line between information and spam.
- DonaldPShimoda 6y ago> I.m.o. this kind of post comes very, very close to the line between information and spam. I strongly disagree with this sentiment. This post is "Hey, I built a cool thing! It costs me money to run so I charge for its use." Their last post about this app was for the initial version released like two years ago. Two posts across a couple years hardly constitutes "spam" by any regularly used definition I am aware of. This app also addresses a unique problem in a way that is straightforward and elegant, and was improved upon as a direct result of comments from HN, so it has close ties to this community. Why would the author not post here with information about the update?
- mkj 6y agoBy itself it might be spammy but the author's replies here have been interesting and welcome.
- wilg 6y agoWhere are you coming up with Show HN is not for paid products? It's not against the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) and HN is run by a VC firm...
- gnicholas 6y agoI didn’t say it was against the rules, just wondering if it is as uncommon as I think it is. Perhaps someone can point me to links of recent/popular Show HN posts for paid (not freemium) products?
- systemvoltage 6y agoWe need an open-source color standard. PANTONE has virtually no competition (RAL, etc are a minuscule % of the market share) and they charge exorbitant prices for their color chips. Standard should be open and anyone can make and sell color chips.