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There's certainly a fair difference in difficulty between hue=(hue+0.5)%1.0, and doing things 'properly' (perceptually uniform spectral sampling? Sounds quite a

There's certainly a fair difference in difficulty between hue=(hue+0.5)%1.0, and doing things 'properly' (perceptually uniform spectral sampling? Sounds quite a lot harder tbh!). HSL and HSV certainly include compromises, but in many cases the utility of being able to work with colour represented in this way means they're still super useful, even if inaccurate.

klodolph 6y ago
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just ask a human to pick colors? By my reckoning, if you write a piece of code that's simple but generates garish colors, it's better to just pick out the colors yourself. Why even bother teaching people about hue=(hue+0.5)%1.0 if the results are so ugly?
- danwills 6y ago
  I do agree the colours in the article were garish, but I'd say that is less because of the HSV/L usage and more the author's choices (including choosing to make complementary colours in this way). The ability HSV gives to easily be able 'rotate' colour, (even though it's around a deformed blob nothing like a circle), and increase and decrease saturation makes it quite useful. I agree that human-picked (where the human very often will be selecting in an HSV-based picker themselves) probably yields a more pleasing result more often (tastes can vary a lot there however), but I think there are some quite solid possibilities with code using HSV too, without having to go the whole-hog with colour-science. Makes it heaps easier to just play with colour for one thing, and code can be just for fun/exploration sometimes I think that's a good thing.
lifthrasiir 6y ago
HSL and HUV would be useful for complementary colors if its hue is uniform enough. The problem is, they are not even that uniform. In some cases the complementary RGB hue can differ up to 30 degrees from the complementary CIELAB hue (which would be much closer to the true perceived hue) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hsv-hues-cf-lch-hues.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hsv-hues-cf-lch-hues.png

klodolph 6y ago

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just ask a human to pick colors? By my reckoning, if you write a piece of code that's simple but generates garish colors, it's better to just pick out the colors yourself. Why even bother teaching people about hue=(hue+0.5)%1.0 if the results are so ugly?

danwills 6y ago
I do agree the colours in the article were garish, but I'd say that is less because of the HSV/L usage and more the author's choices (including choosing to make complementary colours in this way). The ability HSV gives to easily be able 'rotate' colour, (even though it's around a deformed blob nothing like a circle), and increase and decrease saturation makes it quite useful. I agree that human-picked (where the human very often will be selecting in an HSV-based picker themselves) probably yields a more pleasing result more often (tastes can vary a lot there however), but I think there are some quite solid possibilities with code using HSV too, without having to go the whole-hog with colour-science. Makes it heaps easier to just play with colour for one thing, and code can be just for fun/exploration sometimes I think that's a good thing.

lifthrasiir 6y ago

HSL and HUV would be useful for complementary colors if its hue is uniform enough. The problem is, they are not even that uniform. In some cases the complementary RGB hue can differ up to 30 degrees from the complementary CIELAB hue (which would be much closer to the true perceived hue) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hsv-hues-cf-lch-hues.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hsv-hues-cf-lch-hues.png