November 23, 2001

11:44 PM

EasyRGB.com,a site I've recently stumbled across (or forgotten who sent me there) includes a color harmonies calculator that I find very intriguing. While it doesn't always produce great results, I find the idea and the execution pretty well nigh excellent; I just wish I could figure out how it does its calculations. They also attempt to match RGB colors to real-world color systems and paint chips, so if you've just got to make your bedroom match your website you'll be relieved to know that Dutch Boy sells a "3-B-5 Hang Ten" that is devilishly close to #006699.
posted by jplummer (8 comments total)

i think its pretty damn cool.
posted by Satapher at 1:29 AM on November 24, 2001

Thanks, jplummer. That color harmony calculator replaces dozens of thin, expensive - and frequently stolen - books.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:38 AM on November 24, 2001

Neat. Their math details are also pretty useful. I wrote (for CoSource - whatever happened to them?) a program to convert [self link to test images] pnm images to tiff cmyk and it was difficult to find anywhere that had all those formulae in one place.
posted by andrew cooke at 1:43 AM on November 24, 2001

Great concept, but I don't really know how to interpret the color harmony output. Can anyone explain?

I used to have a (MacOS) color picker--called "Harmony" maybe--that would let you choose a color scheme (monochromatic, complementary, triadic, etc.) and then offer you colors related to the one you had selected. It was nice, though the execution was a little flawed. I think I lost it in a disk crash. Any other similar programs or web apps out there?

Thanks for a good link, JP.
posted by rodii at 9:11 AM on November 24, 2001

I love the paint matching - I may just have to rethink my office color... MetaFilter Blue is a bit saturate for all of the walls, but as an accent... Woo!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 12:40 PM on November 24, 2001

An alternative is ColorSchemer. There's an online version too.
posted by SiW at 12:57 PM on November 24, 2001

Posting to your own site isnt' cool, but I wrote a review of lots of color pickers (33 of them), and it seems very relevent to this post: A Review of Web Based Color Pickers. EasyRGB is listed (number 22) and so is The color schemer (number 10). Any suggestions for colorpickers not listed will be greatly appreciated.
posted by tr3pleshot at 4:11 PM on November 24, 2001

Very cool. Lots of potential uses here. Thanks jplummer.
posted by melissa at 10:49 AM on November 25, 2001