

Why Programmers suck at Picking Colors - dood
http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/108/

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bootload
I have a simpler reason why, colour literacy. Most people at the age of 4-6
have similiar drawing and colour mixing skills. You just have to look at
kindergarten pictures to see that. There is some variation but they are pretty
similiar in ability.

Then most people stop drawing and playing with colour. Their _colour literacy_
stays that of a four year old and worse as they will not experiment it
probably degrades from there. So what is the quickest way to re-learn colour
and colour combinations? Go outside and observe natural colour combinations.
Combine these observations with a bit of theory and experimentation and you
can be on your way creating your own colour combinations. For example:
<http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/541666109/>

One other thing. Hackers, programmers and probably writers will have to work
hard and re-wire their brain to some extent. Working with text, code or words
require different parts of the brain compared to visual tasks like combining
colour.

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jacobolus
Yes. Everyone making interfaces or informational diagrams should understand
that value contrast is the most important to human ability to distinguish
colors, and should use a color model like Munsell or Lab to pick colors.

PS: this text box doesn't let me put (more than 1) literal *s in it; there
seems to be no way to escape them so they don't end up emphasizing my text.
Lesson: just use markdown.

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gibsonf1
Yes, but why didn't the author, given his new color choosing ability, not
upgrade his grayscale blog?

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ecuzzillo
What do you mean, why didn't he not upgrade it? He _did_ not upgrade his
grayscale blog.

~~~
gibsonf1
Ah yes, thanks for that (too tired to properly negate)

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jkush
I know I suck at picking colors. Being color blind doesn't help either!

I put together a small service that tells you what colors a url uses. So, if I
see a website that has a nice color palette, I use my service to get the hex
codes. It's way faster and easier than using the eye dropper! Here's the link:

Try putting in <http://news.ycombinator.com>

<http://www.todotoh.com/rgb/rgbanalysis.aspx>

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divia
Perhaps because they are hackers not painters? :-)

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JulianMorrison
I'm no artist but I know what I like, and this site seems to generate very
nice color groupings algorithmically:

<http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/>

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Xichekolas
Glad to know I'm not the only one who is chromatically retarded.

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ptn
I'm wearing black, red, blue, yellow and gray at the moment...

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edw519
Fade to white.

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edw519
Just what we need. Another "expert" comes to a hackers' forum and declares
that programmers suck at something else. Yawn.

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dood
Are you referring to me? I didn't write this, and in fact I pretty much suck
at colour, largely for the reasons suggested in the post, so I found it very
interesting. Also, I don't think the author was declaring that all programmers
suck at color, just that many do, and he then provides some good ways to
understand more for those that don't (colour hacks, if you like). Not terribly
controversial.

~~~
ptn
I think that what he meant is that hackers sucking at colours is a little
bit... irrelevant.

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edw519
Right. In fact, hackers sucking at anything other that hacking is a little
bit... irrelevant.

Am I the only one who's getting a little tired of hearing about all the
unimportant things that I suck at?

