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Comment by notafraudster | Hacker News Reader

This tool is really cool!

But I don't really understand why the text and framing is written is written as if it was supernatural ("esoteric", "mystical", "witchcraft", "magical", "otherworldly", "sorcerer", "summoning", "the power to shape and mold lies in your hands", "the choice is yours", "magic", "uncharted territories", "let not your journey end here", "mystical journey", "arcane knowledge of the ancients"). The first few times it felt a little bit cheeky but by the end it felt like a TikTok about manifesting wealth through your horoscope.

Paradoxically, the one thing I wanted to know that would have been an opportunity for flavour -- how it "def[ies] conventional color science" -- isn't actually clarified in the text.

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I chose to do so because its not based in actual color science, its just made to look good. I thought I might just run with the "hey its just made to look good and its not very accurate" but I might have overdone it a bit :D

It did become clear quickly the that the unexplainable was being explained. ;) The theme is fun and endearing, so keep it even if you add hints that it is art and neither science nor magic. This demo explanation is just beautifully executed, great job, and the palettes do look good.

Your page doesn’t talk about it, but there is something about using a straight-ish line through a color space that tends to generate good palettes. Do you have a working artistic theory? I don’t know why it works but I’ve used that idea for many years. It may be about reducing the dimensionality, or may be because it imposes an average hue to the entire image, I don’t know. I’m wondering if you’ve thought about adding thoughts from an artistic perspective on what makes a good color palette, and how to best get one out of Poline, given various color goals one might have.

A super interesting problem IMO is generating good looking color palettes of maximally distinct colors. “Good looking” tends to require color proximity, and “maximally distinct” tends to require the opposite: distance. How can I get both? :)

stand tall, you did great wordsmithing in that intro!

I think it's lovely. Our modern software tools are far too sterile, I respect and appreciate your willingness to put some whimsy into the world.

No, it's great, stick with it. Intuition and feel are important when it comes to things like color spaces and math and the tendency to drain any fun or mystery out of it and reduce it to the smallest possible number of facts is misplaced.

Boring methods tend to produce boring outcomes. I found this tool much more interesting to play with than conventional palette generators.

thank so much for this comment!

I found it really amusing and thought it was clear it was all a bit tongue in cheek.

Yeah, the prose got repetitive quickly, but the initial moments there.. half reading, half exploring the hues —which kept producing "sound" palettes— surprised me in an.. Ericksonian way. Like experiencing an illusionist perform a magic trick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson

This is color interpolation.

There are others js libraries that does the same thing, but they lack a good interactive tools.

But, unlike others tools, this tool exposes the "xyz coordinates". This is exotic.

Of course it is. But all color interpolation usually happen in the color model used. What makes this one different is that the lines are not drawn in the polar HSL coordinates, but are cartesian instead. The results are quite different if you just interpolate color in HSL as you can see here: https://codepen.io/meodai/pen/GRyjQoZ

Yeah, it is obvious. But word "interpolation" isn't to be found anywhere in the text.

IMO, having something like "color interpolation in HSL Cartesian space" would make it crystal clear what the tool is about. Also, "interpolation" is the keyword I'd use to search for this on Google. So, would likely be an SEO.

Unlike OP, I think it is clever to use words like "enigmatic", "mystical", etc. Not my particular taste, but it is a good branding.

About the transformation. Most libraries can interpolate on CIE's XYZ-D65, but I'm not sure how this would compare with doing operations at Cartesian coordinates of others colorspaces.

The widget from codepen also looks great. You are really good at designing color widgets.

I could definitely add this somewhere :D

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