Concentration on hue and saturation

January 24, 2012 1:57 PM

It's just another clever colour matching game. It seems to be getting trickier and trickier, but don't let that confuse you - it's all about matching the colours perfectly.
posted by hat_eater (58 comments total)

I don't understand complimentary colors. *sob*
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:01 PM on January 24, 2012

It's nice, but the timer is annoying and pointless. That wasn't testing my colour matching skills, it was testing my mouse coordination- once you get to the ternary and quarternary levels, you spend most of your time determining which circle corresponds to which internal wedge. When given enough time, I've yet to fail (and only gotten good or poor a handful of times).
posted by hincandenza at 2:06 PM on January 24, 2012 [7 favorites]

4.0

I don't think that's very good. It feels real nice when you get one perfectly right, very frustrating when you can't get anywhere near a match.
posted by chavenet at 2:07 PM on January 24, 2012

10 6 3 6 4 6
[Hue Saturation Complementary Analogous Ternary Quaternary]

Nailing hue felt pretty good since I'm slightly colorblind.
posted by Edogy at 2:07 PM on January 24, 2012

5.2 and my head hurts now
posted by elizardbits at 2:07 PM on January 24, 2012

Yeah, I don't think I really "got it" once it got past the single color ones. I still just matched up only one of the colors, and it got tedious.
posted by smackfu at 2:08 PM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got a 6.8, and I was really unhappy about the timer because I spent more than half the timer on the later ones trying to figure out where to start refining from.
posted by Nimmie Amee at 2:08 PM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

9

Took me a sec to get what it was doing when it got to "complimentary".
posted by kaseijin at 2:10 PM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Neat! 6.2 here.
posted by jbickers at 2:10 PM on January 24, 2012

10 9 10 10 8 6 = 8.8. Now it's blinkin' time.
posted by theodolite at 2:11 PM on January 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

7.2 and now I've worked out what's going on...
posted by cincinnatus c at 2:12 PM on January 24, 2012

8.4, and I have no idea why any of the modes beyond saturation are meaningful as some sort of time-based game. You're still functionally matching one color and the rest fall in line anyway. Complementary, analogous, ternary and quaternary might be totally useful things to build a color-based quiz/theory game out of but they were just "here's four more levels" here instead of meaning any practical goddam thing.

This feels very much like form-over-function upstart-design-group silliness. I'm not sure that's how I'd want to advertise my work, but I guess gettin' eyeballs is gettin' eyeballs.
posted by cortex at 2:13 PM on January 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

8.7, but I missed one cause I couldn't figure out what was happening with my cursor.
posted by cmoj at 2:13 PM on January 24, 2012

I got an even 7, but missed the first one because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing.
posted by justkevin at 2:16 PM on January 24, 2012

Anyway, my favorite thing like this (based on geometry, not color) is the eyeballing game.
posted by theodolite at 2:16 PM on January 24, 2012 [7 favorites]

7.8, but that includes two instances of not knowing what the fuck I was supposed to be doing.

The lack of instructions and poor interface kinda made this lame.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:18 PM on January 24, 2012

7.7 (9 8 3 9 9 8)

Although I found the same issue as cortex. All you had to do was figure out which slice your icon was determining and go by that. I guess you're supposed to learn about stuff? Maybe? But I spent most of the game in a mad dash to make the colors match and trying to figure out if I was seeing an after-image or not.
posted by griphus at 2:18 PM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got 8.4 second time and agree with Cortex: once you get the hang of this, you're doing one colour at a time and there's nothing more to this.
posted by cincinnatus c at 2:19 PM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

6.3, and I'm partially color blind.
posted by lumpenprole at 2:21 PM on January 24, 2012

9.7 here. Having the colours you're trying to match gradually disappear was a little annoying, but concentrating on one segment and using the others to dial in once it's roughly correct seemed to work pretty well. I was surprised by how far around the hue wheel the perfect colour could be from one which looked very almost right.
posted by lucidium at 2:23 PM on January 24, 2012

8.4, and I have no idea why any of the modes beyond saturation are meaningful as some sort of time-based game.

I found the same issue as cortex. All you had to do was figure out which slice your icon was determining and go by that.

On several occasions in ternary and quaternary I noticed that although I had my chosen colour matched perfectly, two or three others were still slightly mismatched. It seems to be a hardware test for our colour perception (which I failed).
(despite scoring 8,6 and 7,2 on second attempt when I thought I had it figured out.)
posted by hat_eater at 2:25 PM on January 24, 2012

I get what they're trying for - they're gamifying the process of learning what various colours' complements/analogues/whatever are, what hue is, what saturation is. It's a worthy goal. Unfortunately, the time limits are too tight for real learning (at least for me).
posted by Fraxas at 2:27 PM on January 24, 2012

Geez, you guys are good. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing at all. I still can't. I click my cross-hair somewhere and a circle appears somewhere else, and it tells me I'm poor. Fun!
posted by team lowkey at 2:27 PM on January 24, 2012

8.4, using the "focus on a single color and not the rest of the colors" method. I'm not really good at discerning subtle variations in hue, either.

And why is this posted in the green? Seems like a better post for the blue.
posted by not_on_display at 2:27 PM on January 24, 2012 [3 favorites]

This was fun!
posted by spiderskull at 2:28 PM on January 24, 2012

This makes 3 of the 5 things I'm going to learn today.
posted by Jumpin Jack Flash at 2:31 PM on January 24, 2012

I scored 10 on hue and 8 on saturation, which isn't surprising as I get a near perfect score on the hue perception test. No idea what the rest of the test was asking me to do, though. Am I matching the colours, or trying to get the 'partner' colour from the other side of the wheel?
posted by mippy at 2:32 PM on January 24, 2012

7.2, I found it fun and incredibly stressful.

(I should just set up a script that autoposts waxy.org/links)
posted by CharlesV42 at 2:33 PM on January 24, 2012

7.5. Not so much a colour test as a test to figure out the UI in the time necessary to complete the task.
posted by reformedjerk at 2:49 PM on January 24, 2012

It stutters and locks up on my CPU during the saturation test. I tried it first at fullscreen and then way smaller than that and it just does not work. Dammit, I got 10 on the hue and I nailed the first saturation before it locked up.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:49 PM on January 24, 2012

6.7 on a first try. I would have had more fun without the time pressure.
posted by Forktine at 3:03 PM on January 24, 2012

Whatever the highest score is, I got that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:04 PM on January 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got just a little higher than Brandon Blatcher's score.
posted by aubilenon at 3:10 PM on January 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

9.5, but I'm a digital painter and compositor. I imagine that for a layman, the movement necessary to shift a color along just one axis is pretty unintuitive, especially when you get into the way hue and saturation change perceived luminance.

I did enjoy this more than the color chip sorting game that went around a few weeks ago.
posted by balistic at 3:13 PM on January 24, 2012

No one gets higher than me.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:14 PM on January 24, 2012

9.3 first try! Man, that was way more fun than I expected it to be, particularly with the weird halo thing my glasses have been doing as the coating is gradually wearing off. I was doing pretty well at the beginning, but then I hit analogous and ternary and everything fell apart, but I redeemed myself on quarternary!
posted by Diagonalize at 3:14 PM on January 24, 2012

My strategy in the later stages was to first get the saturation about right and then just to circle around until I found a match more or less by chance, because I never figured out which cursor circle was which segment. (8.8, 2nd try)
posted by ikalliom at 3:16 PM on January 24, 2012

89.3
posted by shakespeherian at 3:21 PM on January 24, 2012

[i]My strategy in the later stages was to first get the saturation about right and then just to circle around until I found a match more or less by chance[/i]

Ha, I did just the opposite, ignoring all of the colors except the one under the active cursor. I can see merits to both approaches.
posted by balistic at 3:21 PM on January 24, 2012

8.2 (10 10 6 8 6 9). In at least one of the later levels I had all the colors right but got "poor" because I didn't have them in the right order. (And then I got distracted by thinking about quotient manifolds.)
posted by madcaptenor at 3:24 PM on January 24, 2012

Blue.

Method of Action will be an online course on design
for programmers.

Follow @methodofaction

Subscribe to be notified when we launch.
posted by chavenet at 3:50 PM on January 24, 2012

7.2 and now my eyes feel like somebody took brillo to them.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:58 PM on January 24, 2012

9.5, but I'm a digital painter and compositor. I imagine that for a layman, the movement necessary to shift a color along just one axis is pretty unintuitive, especially when you get into the way hue and saturation change perceived luminance.

I kept thinking also that it'd be a big help to have an expensive, calibrated monitor for this thing.
posted by cmoj at 4:51 PM on January 24, 2012

I blew two of them in "complimentary" because I didn't know what the fuck it wanted. Still got 8.8 though. I give them a C on UX design. If you're going to make a timed test, make it crystal clear what you're asking before the timer starts. And given that they're supposedly going to be teaching design and they make a screwup like that? Fuck 'em.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:58 PM on January 24, 2012

9.5 -- The best part was when you flip to the opposite side of wrong. First you are nowhere right, looking for blue in the oranges, then, almost, almost, ooh so close-- so much closer-- oh god a glitch in the Matrix! Something changed, but what?
posted by TwelveTwo at 5:04 PM on January 24, 2012

42

I cheated.
posted by dbiedny at 5:12 PM on January 24, 2012

Blue.

Or straight to the point:
"Try two games that will be part of Method of Action
Kern Type
Shape Type"

I remembered these games well enough to vaguely note the similarity in design, but obviously not well enough to check. And Andy Baio linked to Shape Type as well.

I think their method works.
posted by hat_eater at 5:20 PM on January 24, 2012

Again, I found it really easy to zero in, intuitively; you could zero in quickly by going across the circle, and seeing the way the colors seem to "flip" in terms of darkness/vividness, then just go in or out along the radius till it disappeared. The first time I got a 7.2, the second time I got an 8.4 by figuring out which wedge consistently assigns to the cursor-ed circle, namely the right-hand side for the doubled views, the bottom for the three-way views, and the bottom left for the four way views. With that, as noted, you're just matching a single color up.

What it would be useful for, without the timed portion, is calibrating your monitor better, by running the test for many different colors and color sets, and telling you to first sync up the red for example, and then saying "Do the blue and green seem to stand out? if so, try adjusting ______ setting on your monitor" etc. Repeat by iteration until your monitor seems perfectly calibrated, and then pop in your favorite Michael Bay DVD and watch those blues and oranges pop!!!

I'd actually find this to then be a better monitor test than the usual ones "Which is least blurry?" or "Move till the X disappears" ones that typically come with monitors or driver software.
posted by hincandenza at 5:29 PM on January 24, 2012

7.5, and I'm partially colour blind.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 5:31 PM on January 24, 2012

9 8 0! 6 9 8 ?!?
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:53 PM on January 24, 2012

Now I feel weird for getting a 9.8 on the first try. I figured this thread would be full of tens. /humblebrag
posted by zixyer at 6:17 PM on January 24, 2012

I aced the hue and saturation tests on single colors, but there were a couple of the tertiary where I was sure one of the colors was an exact match but the other two were still off a bit. But the first color looked right when I fixed the other two.

Also, for some reason I found the Quaternary much easier than any of the triple color sets.
posted by straight at 7:01 PM on January 24, 2012

9.7, and I'm kind of surprised that 9+ seems to be unusually good, because it didn't seem very difficult to me to search for a bit, find something close, and narrow in on the center of the area of distinction by finding the borders along 2 arbitrary axes.

I'm going to hypothesize that this game tests the quality of your monitor more than anything else. I'm totally color retarded, and I'm not a professional in anything graphics-related, so there is no way I can match the top score here so far unless my $550 monitor has anything to do with it.
posted by ilikemefi at 8:53 PM on January 24, 2012

It's kind of OK, but the mouse/movement aspect is a pain. Because it's happening so quickly, I found the afterimage from previous colours interfered with with perception of the current colour.
posted by raygirvan at 10:04 PM on January 24, 2012

5.7, good thing I'm not doing this for a living otherwise there'd be no job security. Controls are a little hokey.
posted by arcticseal at 11:17 PM on January 24, 2012

I am really good at these sorts of color games (9.7, my only not-10 on Quaternary due to panic clicking).

To me it feels like it was really just two games, hue and 4 versions of saturation, because you only really have to pay attention to one color.
posted by that girl at 7:37 AM on January 25, 2012

I kept thinking also that it'd be a big help to have an expensive, calibrated monitor for this thing.

heh yea, I was actually tempted get my work computer online so that I could play using the good monitor and wacom tablet, instead of the soup-splattered netbook with twitchy cordless mouse
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:13 AM on January 26, 2012

Yeah, this $2500 Cintiq didn't hurt my chances any. A lot of people don't realize that most PC laptops ship with 6 bits of color per channel, instead of the 8 you get on a decent desktop monitor. That'd definitely make a difference for this type of task.
posted by balistic at 9:31 AM on January 26, 2012