
Show HN: IRIX – color scheme editor and color tools - albemala
https://irix.app/
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arexxbifs
I thought this was going to be a post about customizing vintage SGI desktops.
Joke’s on me I suppose, for living in a different millenium.

~~~
arminiusreturns
I was expecting x11resources color themes, so I'm not far behind you...

edit: for those who are interested, try these

[http://ciembor.github.io/4bit/](http://ciembor.github.io/4bit/)

[http://terminal.sexy/](http://terminal.sexy/)

[https://bashcolors.com/](https://bashcolors.com/)

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jlgaddis
You may want to reconsider the name.

> _IRIX is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI)
> to run on the company 's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is a
> variety of UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the
> XFS file system and the universally adopted industry-standard OpenGL
> graphics system._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX)

~~~
busymom0
I am pretty sure trademarks only apply to the field they are applied in. I
would guess the IRIX operating system is different from this color tool.

~~~
gnu8
Trademark aside, people still use and love Irix today. This is not
appropriate.

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albemala
Hi everyone!

I'm Alberto, the creator of IRIX.

My background is in computer engineering, but I've always been fascinated with
the design of user interfaces. I tried as much as possible to mix my formal
coding studies and work, with those of UI design. This led me to the creation
of several apps and websites, some of which are currently published and listed
on my personal website ([https://albemala.me/](https://albemala.me/)).

While designing user interfaces, one of the areas I struggle with is color.
Creating beautiful color combinations is very hard - at least for me! So I
decided to create an app to help make this task easier.

Back in 2017 I started working on this project, and after a couple of months
of development, I published Iris - Color Schemes Editor. I iterated on it
quickly, publishing a few updates based on users' feedback. A good number of
people were using it and found it useful, so I decided to move a step forward.

Last year (2019) I re-designed and re-implemented the app from scratch,
improving the overall experience and set of features. A few months of work
later, IRIX 2.0 was ready ([https://medium.com/@albemala/irix-color-scheme-
editor-color-...](https://medium.com/@albemala/irix-color-scheme-editor-color-
tools-is-here-ef6a85f3ac7f)).

So, what is IRIX?

IRIX aims at being the definitive application for designers and artists to
create beautiful color schemes. It is a full-featured color scheme editor and
a collection of advanced color tools.

There are many tools around to work with colors. The web is teeming with
applications to manage color schemes, test color contrast, extract colors from
images, but they all have one or two features only. If you are a designer or
an artist, you are probably familiar with that frustrating situation where you
have three applications and five tabs open in your browser just to create a
single palette!

With IRIX, the goal is to have a single space to work with colors and unify
multiple tools into a single one (“A color app to rule them all”, someone
could say…).

Some of the things you can do with IRIX include:

\- Creating, editing, naming and organizing your color schemes. \- Fine-tuning
the colors in multiple color spaces and giving them names (or let the app
suggest a name for you). \- Generating color harmonies, shades, tints, and
variations. \- Mixing colors in different color spaces. \- Extracting colors
from images. \- Testing colors for accessibility issues (contrast ratio,
lightness, color blindness…). \- Designing color schemes for infographics,
maps, and presentations easily. \- Importing colors from other applications
and exporting them to many formats, like text, file, and images. \- … And
more!

IRIX is available on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

If you're a designer, for work or hobby, I hope you would find this app
useful. I would be glad to hear your feedback and thoughts on it.

~~~
BearOso
> My background is in computer engineering, but I've always been fascinated
> with the design of user interfaces.

Forgive me if I’m being too critical, but I strongly doubt your background or
enthusiasm are that extensive. The real IRIX would be well known to someone
with that description.

On the opposite view, the full capitalization matches the original name, so
it’s possible you’re trying to appropriate it.

Either way, change your project’s name or it’s going to be hurt by it.

~~~
icedchai
That's a bit much. SGI IRIX is basically ancient history. The last release was
in 2006, and SGI's heyday was the late 90's. If you were young or weren't
online then, you wouldn't have a clue about it.

~~~
pjmlp
That is no excuse, a couple of seconds googling for IRIX would explain
everything about SGI IRIX.

Apparently searching to confirm if a name is already taken is asking too much
on this day and age.

~~~
icedchai
I agree he should've searched for the name. But to say he simply "should've
known about IRIX" because he has a computer engineering background is wrong.

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meristem
Site did not render well on Brave/iOS.

I’m in the UX/Human Factors Engineering field and hah, I too thought it was
UNIX-related. Please consider changing the product name. I am guessing it is a
play on iris but problematic for all reasons already outlined in comments.

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albemala
Thank you all for your feedback!

Regarding the website issues - I'm working on an updated version and I'll try
to address all the problems you mentioned.

As for the name - I agree with you, it's been a poor choice, I didn't do much
research on it before publishing, mea culpa.

Apart from this, \- Do you find the actual application useful? \- Would you
consider using it in your everyday work?

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oceanghost
Was an IRIX admin in the Indigo/Octane era. Found this title deeply confusing.

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AceJohnny2
See also Lyft's Colorbox:

[https://www.colorbox.io/](https://www.colorbox.io/)

Announcement and motivation blog post:

[https://design.lyft.com/re-approaching-
color-9e604ba22c88](https://design.lyft.com/re-approaching-color-9e604ba22c88)

and HN discussion, 4 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21028361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21028361)

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nathanwh
Feedback: the site looks quite clumsy on iOS Safari (images and text content
squished to fit on the screen).

I clicked on the toolbox link and the page worked well enough, the tools
didn’t quite fit all the way on the page though. I have a smaller screen
(iPhone 7) so that may be the issue.

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chrismorgan
Although the site mostly works properly without JavaScript, the actual
download links require JavaScript to replace href="#" with the actual href,
which is unfortunate.

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koverda
Site is rather broken on Android chrome.

