Planetside Software Forums

Hi,

I'm interested to know if you use the Windows colour picker. That's the colour picker which is opened from the button at the top right of the TG colour picker (palette icon).

If you do use it, why? What do you feel its advantages are over the TG colour picker?

Regards,

Jo

Yes!!!
When doing color I use it almost every time. I find it much, much quicker, to simply sample my colors from outside sources rather than try to move around in a color wheel.
But frankly, I never understood why there were so many windows for the color options. Why not have them all in one longer window... Actually, I rarely use the others, just the first color window (the one that opens when you click on a color in a node) and the color window your asking about now.

It would be nice if the color sampler were in the first window at least, though. As it is now you have to close out two windows after preforming a single action... It gets annoying when working all day.

No, never.  The Internal TG colour picker options are far superior.  The mixer and shifter panels in particular are fantastic along with the variations and randomizers.

Badger, you're on a Mac, aren't you? I believe this is specifically about the *Windows* color picker (on the Mac that button accesses the Mac color picker; basically it's there to access the standard OS color picker on each platform).

- Oshyan

Yes. I've gotten used to the Windows color picker. Haven't given the option a trial.

Actually I never clicked those top buttons and used the first that pops up. Was good enough. But now I did and here's what I think. The middle three are no use (to me), but the windows color picker is a very good addition. Especially if it would be possible to have a real picker with it, so you can take colors from a photo. And if it could be set as default by choice.
What I do think is a bug, is that if you pick a color from the windows picker, hit OK, TG vanishes to the background if you have other software open (like now, it's dropped behind this screen)

What do you like about the Windows one though? It's the standard Windows picker and we can't add anything to it, so if your idea is "this could be cool but isn't what I want as it is", then it's better that we try to incorporate whatever people like about it into the main picker since as I said we can't change the Windows one.

- Oshyan

Good that you mention this, Oshyan. I never took a real good look at the color choices, but I just did again, and I must say that the second one could be my favorite from now on. So thanks for mentioning it!
What I liked about the windows picker is the field of colors, where you can just point what you need and maybe shift a little after that. The second one I dismissed as the first time I opened it it was in a dull color I previously picked, and I didn't notice ( ::) ) the light-dark slider. I couldn't distinguish the colors very much, so I just didn't understand that field. But now that I found this slider and the field it's great! Really, I mean that. So if a real picker could be added to that, I would be very happy.

When picking a colour I always want something where I can click a colour and then tweak it slightly with sliders afterwards. If I was just given sliders and no colour box\wheel it would take me a lot longer to get the colour if I have to manually find the right values.

So with that in mind I like to use number 2, with the colour wheel, or the windows one. I probably use number 2 more as I like the variations option.

While we are talking about the colour window, can I put in a request please? Could you add an option where we are able to pick colours from external windows, like a web browser for instance. At the moment I have to manually save the image and load it into a paint package, record the rgb value and then input this into terragen. It would be a lot easier if I could use a terragen colour picker.

I actually use all of them.
The windows one if I want a colour quickly (although having to close out two windows is annoying).
The colour wheel for a more subtle approach (although sometimes it's not subtle enough, could we have  zoom into a section of the colour wheel for finer control)
and the various sliders for fine tweaking.
:)
Richard
Oh and the ability to grab a colour off screen would be supper cool (maybe press alt to grab a colour with out lighting and atmospherics)

Hi Ulco,

Quote from: Dune on September 16, 2013, 03:16:58 AM
So if a real picker could be added to that, I would be very happy.

What do you mean by a "real picker"?

Regards,

Jo

I always use the Colour Wheel TG picker. Never really looked at the others until reading this thresd. I may start having a go with them too. I'd like to add myself to the quest for a colour "picker" to be able to click on a photo in a web page or bitmap editor and select a colour from that and have TG use it. Very useful in some situations, especially for getting the right brown. I always find these are the hardest colours to "make".

I agree with others about being able to pick colours from an image. Having a Unicode value input would be usefull, so that I can copy colours from an app that can pick colours off an image, rather than referencing single RGB values.

I've never used the windows colour picker. Tbh, I've never worked out how to use the various slots at the bottom of the pallete.

With 'real picker' I mean the ability to pick colors from external images, I would actually call the current 'picker' a 'color chooser'.

Back of the Bus, Badger!  ;)

lol Ok, But I still love the color sampler ;D

I use them all............... :)

I,too,use all of them,the windows one rather seldom,though.
Also I would like to have a 'real' color picker to pick from external sources,
really miss that option.

I tend to start with the Windows Color Picker to get a basic color and then use the other pickers to adjust from there.

My thoughts on the colour picker.

The most important feature in anything like this is being able to save colours. If I remember right you can do this easily on Mac but Terragen should have some way of saving collections of colours like colour palettes in Gimp or Photoshop. If you look at most art apps whether 2D or 3D this is usually possible. I think in Terragen it's even more important because it's not like you are blending things on a canvas with a brush so defining the right colours for certain environments can be very tricky because it's so subtle. You could build up palettes for various typical environments.

I use the default picker 90% of the time and the Windows picker the rest of the time. I am with efflux, though, being able to save colors for future reference (or even better entire palettes with meaningful naming) would come very handy. Also, color sampling from external sources would be a welcome feature for me as well.

Quote...(or even better entire palettes with meaningful naming)...

ooooohhhh! That would be nice. The ability to load a pallet from PS or a independent pallet soft, and then limit all TG colors to that pallet (or closest color) would be sweet!

I use the Windows picker by habit and because it seems to be the only one where I can enter numerical values for saturation.

I use the TG Wheel the most, so I don't really use Windows picker "rather than", but if I want see the results of dropping saturation for example exactly 5,
the Windows picker is the one I use.

For me Sliding the mouse pointer on the wheel is not very precise. I wish the area of the Wheel colour picker window could be enlarged so
the mouse would be making finer adjustments.

I would like to see a colour picker similar to the Jovian colour picker for Lightwave. Lets me select a colour from an image or anywhere on screen.

Hi,

Quote from: fleetwood on September 22, 2013, 11:25:11 AM
I use the Windows picker by habit and because it seems to be the only one where I can enter numerical values for saturation.

The Sliders panel of the TG color picker has HSB sliders. Use the popup which is RGB by default to choose HSB or greyscale.

Regards,

Jo

Hi everyone,

I should mention that picking colours from the screen and palettes/swatches are some things which I intend to implement in the future.

Regards,

Jo

Seems like I need to get familiar with what the TG colour pickers can do. Missed the HSB option, Thanks Jo

I only ever use the HSB tab, it's perfect. A 'save colours' option would be nice and a screen picker even nicer, no big deal though. Can't really get my head around the mixer tab and the wheel isn't as precise as it could be. The HSB tab is great.

Seems like a good place to mention the Colour Picker docs!:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Colour_Picker

Quote from: dandelO on September 23, 2013, 07:13:51 PM
Can't really get my head around the mixer tab and the wheel isn't as precise as it could be.

The Mixer panel lets you mix two different colours to create a new one. Let's say you have a green colour and you want to add some brown to it. Go to the Mixer panel and set Colour 2 to a brown colour. Now use the slider in the Mixture part of the panel to control how much brown gets added to the colour. The values at each end of the slider show what proportion of each colour is contributing to the new colour. Hopefully that explains one of the things you can use the Mixer panel for. I'll add an example like this to the Colour Picker docs.

Regards,

Jo

Cheers, Jo. I meant to say the 'shifter' panel actually but I'll have a read and hopefully clear that up now, I couldn't really work out how the colour fields were changing when using the little +- buttons on each well. I'll check it out. Still, I think I'll probably stick with the HSB sliders, I like the numerical values alongside the colour. :)

Yes

I prefer the general Windows colour picker; however, I really like the picker which generates close variants too - specifically that functionality, rather than the accompanying picker.

Edit: Palette/swatch functionality would be a nice addition, yeah

Hi Eoin,

Quote from: EoinArmstrong on September 25, 2013, 03:18:11 AM
I prefer the general Windows colour picker;

So what do you prefer about it?

Regards,

Jo

The option to import and create Photoshop swatch files would be very useful but then so would a color gradient node but another topic for another time.

Quote from: dandelO on September 23, 2013, 07:13:51 PM
I only ever use the HSB tab, it's perfect. A 'save colours' option would be nice and a screen picker even nicer, no big deal though. Can't really get my head around the mixer tab and the wheel isn't as precise as it could be. The HSB tab is great.

For colour picking from the screen as a colour blind hippie I use Colour Spy, a handy free utility...
http://download.cnet.com/Colour-Spy/3000-10247_4-10503781.html

Just found this thread.  No I don't use the windows colour picker I use the sliders. I wish though that all 3 sliders sets rgb, hsb and grey scale wer on one panel rather than 3.  Glad to here a colour picker will be added in the future.