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So, um, I am a professional artist, and one of my regular tricks for figuring out why a drawing isn't working is to throw a desaturation layer on the top of the

So, um, I am a professional artist, and one of my regular tricks for figuring out why a drawing isn't working is to throw a desaturation layer on the top of the stack. Quite often it turns out that I have chosen colors that have contrast in saturation and hue, but very similar values. I play with the colors until they work in greyscale, then turn off that desaturation layer, do some small tweaks to make sure their hue/saturation work with their new values, and things look a lot better. A drawing with little contrast in its values is a drawing that is muddy and hard to make out. If the values are the same and it's high-saturation then it can even be actively painful to look at, as the colors start vibrating against each other in your visual cortex. Sometimes I do that deliberately; all rules of art are really guidelines, and any rule that says "never do this" actually means "don't do this without knowing damn well that you are going into difficult territory, and if you have a solid reason to do it anyway, make sure you're doing everything else extra well to make up for this". Good luck making this work despite having next to no value contrast.

tshaddox 4y ago
Having little contrast in lightness is mentioned multiple times on that page as being an explicit design goal.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Yes. It is. Like I said: good luck making this work, because you sure are breaking a pretty important rule of choosing colors.
  - svrtknst 4y ago
    Not saying you're right or wrong - personally I like the palette but not the theme - but these comments give off a pretty arrogant attitude that I think is uncalled for.
    - washbrain 4y ago
      It's not at all arrogant in my reading, more like lightly exasperated? They understand exactly what the color scheme is trying to do, they gave reasons why it is naive, and they basically said, "go with God".
    - solasluaith 4y ago
      As mentioned in my original post, the theme for sure needs significant work and could be improved a lot. I know my way around colour science and typography, but not around UI design at all and I’m still a novice programmer. I’m glad I achieved my main goal though.
      - egypturnash 4y ago
        Good luck making it work! :)
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      You're making personal attacks because an artist came along, said "here's why this doesn't work," and when you didn't listen and tried to lecture them about the Readme, they weren't moved, because despite the original author's goals, it still doesn't work The artist isn't being arrogant. You ignored what they said and talked down to them, and they stood their ground. Now you're acting like they're doing something wrong, and publicly criticizing them. No, it's not arrogance. It's just that you are arguing without understanding.
    - egypturnash 4y ago
      I've been a professional artist for twenty years. My preferred method of working is to place colors directly against each other without the safety net of hard, high-contrast outlines to save me from the muddy pit of samey values. I have to be aware of this problem pretty much every day of my working life. I am curious how you think I could have said "dude you are making this so fucking hard on yourself by choosing to have next to no value contrast, here are some ways I regularly have to check that I'm not doing this by mistake, good luck figuring out how to get everything else so amazingly perfect that it overcomes this giant deliberate flaw" without sounding "arrogant".
alx__ 4y ago
Yeah, this is why I find using the HSL color representations[1] and adjusting the lightness values to be more pleasing when creating stepping tones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV
solasluaith 4y ago
I feel like you have kind of missed the point here. I am doing everything else extra to make up for the lack of contrast in luminance if you read the documentation, but of course that can only do so much. The reason to choose uniform luminance is also explained, and motivated by classical typography where you aim for a uniform, even appearance of text. I was attempting to achieve this while using the remaining colour space to still allow for the ability to scan for hue/chroma. There was never any room to make it look “good” or “pretty” and as much as I personally also value beauty in design, I put function first here, even if that makes things look “muddy”.

tshaddox 4y ago

Having little contrast in lightness is mentioned multiple times on that page as being an explicit design goal.

egypturnash 4y ago
Yes. It is. Like I said: good luck making this work, because you sure are breaking a pretty important rule of choosing colors.
- svrtknst 4y ago
  Not saying you're right or wrong - personally I like the palette but not the theme - but these comments give off a pretty arrogant attitude that I think is uncalled for.
  - washbrain 4y ago
    It's not at all arrogant in my reading, more like lightly exasperated? They understand exactly what the color scheme is trying to do, they gave reasons why it is naive, and they basically said, "go with God".
  - solasluaith 4y ago
    As mentioned in my original post, the theme for sure needs significant work and could be improved a lot. I know my way around colour science and typography, but not around UI design at all and I’m still a novice programmer. I’m glad I achieved my main goal though.
    - egypturnash 4y ago
      Good luck making it work! :)
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    You're making personal attacks because an artist came along, said "here's why this doesn't work," and when you didn't listen and tried to lecture them about the Readme, they weren't moved, because despite the original author's goals, it still doesn't work The artist isn't being arrogant. You ignored what they said and talked down to them, and they stood their ground. Now you're acting like they're doing something wrong, and publicly criticizing them. No, it's not arrogance. It's just that you are arguing without understanding.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    I've been a professional artist for twenty years. My preferred method of working is to place colors directly against each other without the safety net of hard, high-contrast outlines to save me from the muddy pit of samey values. I have to be aware of this problem pretty much every day of my working life. I am curious how you think I could have said "dude you are making this so fucking hard on yourself by choosing to have next to no value contrast, here are some ways I regularly have to check that I'm not doing this by mistake, good luck figuring out how to get everything else so amazingly perfect that it overcomes this giant deliberate flaw" without sounding "arrogant".

alx__ 4y ago

Yeah, this is why I find using the HSL color representations[1] and adjusting the lightness values to be more pleasing when creating stepping tones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

solasluaith 4y ago

I feel like you have kind of missed the point here. I am doing everything else extra to make up for the lack of contrast in luminance if you read the documentation, but of course that can only do so much. The reason to choose uniform luminance is also explained, and motivated by classical typography where you aim for a uniform, even appearance of text. I was attempting to achieve this while using the remaining colour space to still allow for the ability to scan for hue/chroma. There was never any room to make it look “good” or “pretty” and as much as I personally also value beauty in design, I put function first here, even if that makes things look “muddy”.