Can someone explain to me the logic behind the color picker?

[Scoox]

I don't understand the color picker layout, that is, the order in which the colors appear:



Compare that with FL Studio's picker, which has its own set of problems, but let's ignore those for the time being and just focus entirely on layout. In FL's picker, if you want brighter tones, you move towards the top. If, conversely, you prefer less aggressive tones, you move towards the bottom—pretty straightforward:



I've looked at Live's picker many times and I just can't see a clear pattern. Interestingly, if I look at each row individually in isolation, it makes sense (like it's some kind of color theme), but stacked together the way the are to me it looks like a bunch of colors in random order. Maybe someone with a graphic design background could shed some light. Is there a correct way to use this color picker?

[[jur]]

Don't quote me, but I think I've read somewhere that it's simply a "standard" (but which one, that would be the question...) palette in graphic design... maybe from the 2000' ?

[Scoox]

Don't quote me, but I think I've read somewhere that it's simply a "standard" (but which one, that would be the question...) palette in graphic design... maybe from the 2000' ?

I have a feeling there is a valid reason for it, but the way it's laid out kinda makes comparing some colors hard. For example, the greens several shades of green that look quite similar but are not close together, which makes it very hard to tell the difference. It also begs the question: do we need three shades of green that look practically identical? Certainly similar enough that there is no benefit to choosing one over the other.

[[jur]]

I'm colorblind, so this palette is as weird as any other palette

[jestermgee]

I'm colorblind, so this palette is as weird as any other palette

Same, I just click on something that seems valid for whatever i'm doing and the world keeps spinning.

FWIW I am 40 and my Brother is also colour-blind and we were discussing things a few weekends ago and it came up that Peanut Butter he was recently told is not green but brown.... That shattered my 40 year perception of the world since if you asked me before that day what colour PB was I would have said green too. I had to google it, he was right, but I was happy to learn it is a common perception.

[Scoox]

I'm colorblind, so this palette is as weird as any other palette

Same, I just click on something that seems valid for whatever i'm doing and the world keeps spinning.

FWIW I am 40 and my Brother is also colour-blind and we were discussing things a few weekends ago and it came up that Peanut Butter he was recently told is not green but brown.... That shattered my 40 year perception of the world since if you asked me before that day what colour PB was I would have said green too. I had to google it, he was right, but I was happy to learn it is a common perception.

Can you not tell apart certain colors though? For me, when I look at a color gradient that goes from red to violet, I see all colors but at a glance I see considerably more green and blue than anything else, which means that perhaps two shades of green that to some people look very distinct to me look too similar to care. That's why I think the color picker colors should be user-defined. It would still be a 5x14 picker, all Live needs to remember is which X-Y position in the picker you selected, then apply the color as per the user-defined color map. That means if you were to load someone else's project, it would look different on your computer than on the author's, and that's fine since the colors would still be consistent (for example, where the author used brown, on your computer you might see green).

[jestermgee]

I can tell colours apart if they are together. So I have issues with red wavelength, it is received much weaker than other wavelengths so colours that have red or offsets of those wavelengths apparently look slightly different. Purple appears as a dark blue but put dark blue and purple side by side I can usually pick it.

Lights that are R/G/B the red for me will always look more "dull" than others of the same output power. I guess it is just a slight limitation in how far my vision extends into the red end of the spectrum.

Main point I was making tho, is even with all this that people don't really understand unless they too are also colour-blind, I just pick colours that are close to the pitch of the sound. Bass will be a dark colour (could be red, could be brown), Snares will be a mid bright (maybe green, maybe yellow) and hats are a crisp blue, purple or even pinkish maybe. At a glance no matter what the specific colour I can tell what the sound will be based on the shade of colour and that's all I care about. Simply doesn't register as important when talking the order of a pallet of colours, never even considered how someone would order them.

Was told in engineering school by one lecturer I would never be a technician if I can't read red/brown from a resistor band... Another lecturer said that's rubbish and why we have multi-meters.

[pottering]

In my opinion, each row/line is like a separate qualitative palette, that is, each row has a different "theme" or "feel".

https://seaborn.pydata.org/tutorial/color_palettes.html

The are not named, but to me the 1st looks "modern", 2nd looks like "bright/purer colors", 3rd "pastel", 4th "muted" and 5th "dark".

Some specific colors are probably tweaked not to be too similar to existing ones, and the last column is just a grayscale. Picking from the same row will give a more consistent look. (EDIT: If you want subdued colors you can just pick the colors from one subdued row like the 3rd)

How it looks in a Push's RGB pad was probably also a consideration for which colors were chosen.

[Scoox]

Was told in engineering school by one lecturer I would never be a technician if I can't read red/brown from a resistor band

That is some serious BS indeed... I used to work as a technician and it was all SMT resistors so basically no color coding. And yeah, we had multimeters

[jestermgee]

Was told in engineering school by one lecturer I would never be a technician if I can't read red/brown from a resistor band

That is some serious BS indeed... I used to work as a technician and it was all SMT resistors so basically no color coding. And yeah, we had multimeters

It was 22 years ago, to be fair it was all still very thru-hole components and reading resistors was one thing we all had to do but I knew the patterns and when red/brown wouldn't usually be used, when they were side-by-side I was able to tell.

Still, it was the main reason I was not able to enter into electronics in the defence force at the time. I guess they need to be 100% confident the guy cutting the red wire is indeed cutting the red wire.

[[jur]]

I'm colorblind, so this palette is as weird as any other palette

Same, I just click on something that seems valid for whatever i'm doing and the world keeps spinning.

FWIW I am 40 and my Brother is also colour-blind and we were discussing things a few weekends ago and it came up that Peanut Butter he was recently told is not green but brown.... That shattered my 40 year perception of the world since if you asked me before that day what colour PB was I would have said green too. I had to google it, he was right, but I was happy to learn it is a common perception.

I love peanut butter, and it's definitely green!

[fishmonkey]

Still, it was the main reason I was not able to enter into electronics in the defence force at the time. I guess they need to be 100% confident the guy cutting the red wire is indeed cutting the red wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcaWQZlPXgQ