OlivierVicario
commented
6 years ago It is difficult to choose colors directly in their 3D space. The approach adopted in this program is to project in true size plans that are sections of the volume. 2D tools are applied on a plane and there is no need for anything else I think. the ortho mode makes it possible to browse the volume while being parallel to one of the three axes. The contrast mode is more complex. The planes all pass through the origin and are oriented from 0 ° to 360 ° with respect to the plane formed by the two chosen axes. So the volume is fully traveled. I appreciate the proposal to have a tool allowing the creation of branches to enrich the choice of colors. Extra freedom is given to the user. This will not be easy to program. A big thank you for your appreciation of the program and your illustrations that are very interesting.
Ortho + Contraste are ineffective for the color picking tools and are mainly useful for visualizing slices of the gamut. The reason I believe this is because you can't set the 3rd dimension individually per point on the color picking tools, you can only approximate the movement you want in a roundabout way. Also there's not much contrast available either, I tried out a gradient on a tile set and Contraste was unusable, instead I had to use Ortho and then mask screenshots of different levels together and then adjust the contrast within the image editor on top of that. It wasn't an ideal process, though it did look very good in the end.
My proposed solution is an optional isometric view / interactive 3D rotation and the ability to right-click and drag individual points up or down the 3rd dimension with a dotted line between the point and the plane's surface to aid in visualizing the location on the plane.
Alternatively, and I save this as a second option because it's very different from the current method, full-blown 3D representation of the gamut with outlines or wireframes showing the color of the outer edge, and perhaps an optional and adjustable volume of sparse small floating dots to show the color inside the volume as well. There's one other 3D interactive color tool I've found that operates like this, though it's not a color picker and more of a gamut / ICC visualization and color manipulation tool, and it's also Java with available source: ICC3D.
Lastly, having multiple color picking tools on the screen at once would be helpful with constructing larger palettes rather than just single gradients. A tool that's like segment or quadratic but with the ability to extrude another path off of it would help with the creation of color palettes like this:
Where branching ramps and shared colors are important. Currently the program can create beautiful selections of color but for this sort of use that goes beyond single gradients the user will have to manually interpolate and adjust the colors outside of the program, despite its wide selection of color scheming tools.
And a minor issue: The exported PNGs have a blank alpha channel that could be dropped.
Overall it's an extremely good program, can't believe it doesn't have more groundswell. The UI is beautiful, the colors even more so, and the ability to do more than just a simple linear gradient is excellent.