Show HN: Paletter – Create Professional Color Palettes from a Single Color
paletter.appSadly, I lack the ability to generate good palettes. I just have a hole in my brain where that ability should go. So a palette generator is no help, for me.
Is there a good, reasonably active, site with a list of palettes that talented people were good enough to make Freely available? I used to go to kuler.adobe.com (spelling?) but I think it changed and I've since had trouble finding one that is as good.
If i spare a tiny bit of advice, it would be this: There's a big misunderstanding about what makes a good palette, and color palette tools are largely the culprit.
Creating a usable palettes has very little to do with the usual "find five colors that look good together" approach and is actually a much more tangible and technical process.
You'll want to start with ONE color. Create a step of shades onto your background color & check it for possible needs of hue and saturation tweaks along the grading.
Find a complementary dull, almost gray color and develop the same kinds of shade.
You're mostly done now. It's often advisable to find a secondary, complementary color to go with it, but that's it pretty much it for the breadth of the palette you'll actually need in most ui design projects.
Going off most of these typical 5c color palette proposals that look good on their own will almost never lead you to a good and foremost usable color scheme, it's nice to look at but the way these are used make it appear like you need half a dozen primary colors. What you'll actually want is one brand color and matching greyscale, and then work off the requirements of elements that need to stand out.
Just like with typography, heavy limitation but subtle alterations of your palette is what leads to a good looking, coherent design.
Agree with you on all of your points. In case anyone is looking, https://coolors.co/generate is a good site for finding shades of a color (hover a color and go to the shade section).
All you need is to pick a base color for your brand. Paletter will then generate different schemes and palettes for you based on that color. And you can play with it and explore :) I'm the same as you haha
Thank you. At the site I mentioned, I found that I would pick some palettes that I thought suited my needs, and found that they did not follow any of the standard patterns (complementary, etc.). So I came to the sense that the patterns are fine as far as they go, but that they do not go all the way.
But it seems like there's a lot more that goes into making a palette specifically for user interfaces: https://design.gs.com/news/color
There's a difference, part of it is a matter of a taste, like picking a color for your band, part of is it logical, like accessibility, color psychology, etc.
I'd say most people struggle with the taste part, and that's what Paletter helps with. The logical side of things can be learned quickly.
Though it's gotten ad spammy it seems
Thank you. I've bookmarked it. (I am fine with ads; although it can be overdone, of course.)
I'll mention that one thing that is appealing is that the license is clear. I use the palettes for some Freely-licensed projects and so I redistribute the materials. In many places it is hard to tell what is allowed (I have a number of times spent some effort tracking down a creator only to be eventually unable to get more than "It is free" for a license statement.)
? that's crazy to me! how can one claim to copyright a combination of colors, especially if it's not in combination like copying the pepsi logo or seomthing
We claim credit for the combination of letters that we call a short story, or even for a slogan ("I'm loving it."). We claim credit for a short song, or many other combinations of atomic components.
The fact that I can't do it means, to me, that there is creativity involved. Creators deserve rights. That's fair enough, it seems to me.
I was looking for a site where creators had generously made some available under a Free license.
Used to go here all the time but my god has it fallen off. On mobile it looks horrible
yeah it looks and loads horrible now and doesn't seem as active. but i have found some really new ideas from there!
here's my collection of color guides with some preselected colors: https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#col...
thanks for adding Paletter :)
Hey folks! Loving the comments on trying to use the screenshot. I thought it would be really nice to have a full size demo of the product rather than a scaled down graphic - but it turns out there could be a downside!
Happy to answer any and all of your questions!
This looks nice, but I don't think I'd want to pay $10 for a color picker, especially one that would only work on my Mac...
What kind of features would you want for ten dollars?
I think 10 dollars is a lot to ask for a color picker when there are lots of established and free online options (Adobe Kolor, Coolers, etc.). If you could match the featureset of those programs with some sort of cloud-saving functionality/library for my palette, I'd probably go for it. Especially if it has a Linux-native frontend like GTK, I'd end up using it pretty frequently.
Your call though, I'm just a guy who uses software.
Thanks. Paletter's feature set goes quite beyond what the mainstream tools offer, but maybe that needs to be more clear.
Cloud palettes are probably coming. As for Linux, would be a tough call since most designers are on Mac and Windows.
Is there a specific reason this needs to be a program I download rather than just a website?
At least for Mac, people have completely different UI/UX expectations for a website and an app. Designers tend to be pretty picky about their tools.
The app looks great! I appreciate the native Mac design, and the tab picker at the top is well done.
The intro video was helpful to see the app in action, but it was hard for me to understand the actual process of how I would "create a palette from a single color". It might be helpful to have more of a tutorial video with voice over that walks through starting with a color, and getting to a full palette.
The tagline of creating a palette from a single color is very compelling to me (as a developer with a modicum of design talent), but I was confused/overwhelmed by all the options and it was hard for me to piece together what was happening in the preview video.
Note: this is a downloadable app for MacOS and I too was fooled by the autoplay video.
I actually tried to use the screenshot. Autoplay is disabled in my browser, I suppose it's easier to see that it's not a webapp when the video is playing.
Site isn’t responding for me. Does anyone have a good accessibility-oriented color generator that makes actually good color combinations?
Coolors[1] has never failed me. It's got a great UI, great workflow and is totally free.
What device are you using?
Just going by what I see in the video, I get the impression that the color palettes are generated in RGB space? I think you should at least support Lab if you want to call the app professional.
It supports RGB, LRGB, HSL, HCL and LAB (for now :)
I can't find any copy on the MAS listings or on the website that describes the differences between Paletter and Paletter Lite. Even just a feature matrix would be good.
Very good point, can't believe I missed that.
I have it inside Paletter Lite app.. have a screenshot for you here: https://imgur.com/a/CJvf0fh
There is gpick[1] for Linux users
The product looks interesting. The website is pretty aggressive about trying to open the App Store.
What is the difference between the Lite version and the paid version?
Thanks... good things happen when the end user is on the App Page :P
I am going to outline it on the next website.. for now, it's present in the Upgrade tab on Paletter Lite
Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/CJvf0fh
Linux support?
Not likely :| maybe a web product down the line - can suggest to sign up for company updates
Thanks.
This kind of thing has been on my todo list for years. I should do it some day.
Why are online color palettes always 5 colors? It seems... arbitrary.
Completely arbitrary
I commend the author on their entrepreneurialism. Not sure why this needs to be a native app. You can code up a web app to generate color palettes in about 20 minutes, which is a fun excercise. Or you can just google color palette generator:
https://www.tailwindshades.com
https://tailwind.simeongriggs.dev
https://javisperez.github.io/tailwindcolorshades/
https://tailwind-color-picker.jessarcher.com
Also, maybe consider hosting on Netlify or Vercel or Github Pages, or anything that doesn't require a server to spin up for a static site.
Honestly, half of the point was to have a native app. It changes the perception of the product, gives it a proper presence on your app dock, works offline, and has the system related features you would expect :)
It also helps piggyback on the App Store for discovery.
I just purchased this app after reading this comment and was very disappointed to discover that it is not a native app, but an Electron app.
Furthermore, maybe I am missing something, but where are the color management settings?
Color management is done on the OS level. If you're not happy with the quality of app.. would love to know what's not working for you - and am happy to provide a refund.
Designer here, actually a big fan of the desktop software approach. I tend to keep all my ressources as local as possible and don't really like working off webapps and being account & online bound in my process. I guess that's a matter of taste, but I'm really happy seeing this project pop up.
> You can code up a web app to generate color palettes in about 20 minutes, which is a fun excercise.
I'd be really interested in seeing someone do that in 20 minutes. If you ever decide to do that, please post here.
Alright, maybe a bit more than 20 mins. It's ugly, it's rudimentary, but it works. Feel free to fork it. The color/palette generation functions can use some work and I am not a designer.
Obviously it was a bit of a facetious comment, and props to the author for building a full iOS app. This is definitely not that.
https://hn-color-palette-generator.netlify.app
https://github.com/noughtme/color-palette/tree/main/src
*I have a bunch of color related function code snippets I use for dataviz, so I did not write the utils file "from scratch" just now. Also chakra-ui is a great component library that helps with quick prototyping.
It's not ugly, and it works. Congrats on shipping and thanks for sharing!
This is actually very useful and tastefully done! Bookmarked!
I bet I could code up a site that has a link to a different colour palette generator in 20 minutes.
Great list. I use one that follows Material Design guidelines. It's called Material Design Palette Generator (http://mcg.mbitson.com/), and the source is on GitHub (https://github.com/mbitson/mcg).
I'll thrown in my personal favorite, Paletton. I am not affiliated with them in any way, just a happy user.
https://color.cloudflare.design/ by Cloudflare is my go to nowadays.
here is my collection of more palette generators: https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#pal... mostly gotten off HN every time it comes up
Also Adobe Color (https://color.adobe.com)