6 ms·
Show HN: Explore color palettes inspired by 3000 master painter artworks
I built PaletteInspiration.com, a browsable archive of color palettes pulled from artworks by 3,000+ master painters (Monet, Vermeer, Raphael, Van Gogh).
Why I built it: every color palette generator I tried converged on the same five muted pastels. Painters spent centuries figuring out color and we mostly ignore that body of work when picking colors for digital design.
Please share your feedback on the Color Harmony Explorer - drag the wheel to any color and it shows which hues master painters historically paired with it (not only standard complementary, analogous, triadic, etc.) It is solely based on co-occurrence across thousands of real paintings. Not algorithmic color theory rules - actual empirical pairings.
No signup, no paywall, no email capture. Just curious what people think.
- anon13213 4mo ago[dead]
- vardump 5mo agoWeird how similar many of those are to Commodore 64 palette.
- ouli 4mo agoYou are absolutely right, I did not realize how similar some of these palettes are to Commodore 64 palette see this palette for example: https://paletteinspiration.com/fauvism-palettes/fauvism-19-palette/ https://paletteinspiration.com/fauvism-palettes/fauvism-19-p... or other Fauvism palettes: https://paletteinspiration.com/fauvism-palettes/ https://paletteinspiration.com/fauvism-palettes/
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- BlueRock-Jake 5mo agoThis is great! Love the idea. You should send to some art programs, sure they would get a kick out of it. Also gives another use case outside of just digital design.
- ouli 4mo agoGreat suggestion, thank you! I'll try reaching out to some art schools to see if they'd find the site useful.
- frangonf 4mo agoAs a gruvbox enjoyer, I approve.
- mannyv 4mo agoapp version?
- ouli 4mo agocoming soon
- yubblegum 4mo agoIt's wonderful. Thank you for building this.
- ouli 4mo agoThank you for your kind words!
- beezle 4mo agoThe letter directory is based upon artist first name... seems odd especially as most are going to know the last name and only maybe the first.
- huflungdung 4mo ago[dead]
- realitysballs 4mo agoWhy no contemporary/modern painters? First looked for Basquiat then Lichtenstein , nothing
- ouli 4mo agoMost contemporary artists works are still under copyrght laws.
- mock-possum 4mo agoThe colours they used aren’t
- austinjp 4mo agoSo... ummm... the website and all the submitter's comments here seem very Claude generated, no? Spam filters are going to have to get a lot more sophisticated. "Slop" filters, even.
- 79a6ed87 4mo agoHi, I like it! 2 things I noticed: 1) Aren't "Modernism" and "Modernismo" the same thing? I'm a Spanish speaker and from my POV they are 2) Selected "Naïve Art" style and it's broken (images not loading). Probably something to do with the diaeresis
- ouli 4mo agoBoth issues are fixed now. Yes "Modernism" and "Modernismo" are the same, only some Latin American artists have art style as Modernismo instead just Modernism.
- khazhoux 4mo agoouli, I feel like the algorithm fails to capture the essential colors and their roles. For example, for Mondrian I expect to find a palette with white, black, red, blue, yellow. Instead, the palette is a big swatch of white, a big off-white, and then little strips of color, with some equally-weighted grays too. For Monet, many of the paintings have an important color highlight (e.g., the orange sun), which isn't captured in any of the palettes. Needs more tweaking.
- rahadbhuiya 4mo ago[dead]
- anthk 4mo agoColor extractor from pictures: https://git.2f30.org/colors/log.html https://git.2f30.org/colors/log.html
- woolion 4mo agoNot sure about the use for it, is it supposed to be design or painting? I've thought about making this for a long time to help me with painting, but in that case I think to be useful you need a bit more ways to see the data -- mostly, the thing that is the most important is value. So to get something useful out of it you need a distribution of the hues conditioned value. And for design, the problem is a bit different. You may have a good looking palette, but 'inverting it' for dark mode is not trivial, and neither are gradients, getting intermediate colors, or getting a shifted hue. It's called inspiration so it's fulfilling its promise, I'm just curious what are your thoughts on these since you obviously thought a lot about it.
- assimpleaspossi 4mo agoI see these palettes shown everywhere and see no value in them whatsoever. As a designer or painter, one needs to develop their own palette for what they are trying to create. So what difference does it make what someone else used no matter how famous? I just don't get it.
- eudamoniac 4mo agoKind of a stupid comment tbh. Taste requires breadth of experience. "As a creative, one needs to develop their own <creative thing/technique> for what they are trying to create. So what is the value in looking at how other creative things were made?"
- woolion 4mo agoI don't think the question is stupid, because I kind of consider that to make use of a palette like this, you still need a lot of skills that if you do have, you can probably as easily do your own palette directly from a painting by yourself. >As a creative, one needs to develop their own <creative thing/technique> for what they are trying to create. So what is the value in looking at how other creative things were made? That's not the how of the process at all, that's the end result. The "how" for traditional art is completely different; it is taking pigments as a base rather than light, and the algebra of composition is not the same either.
- CalmBirch127 4mo ago[dead]
- trox 4mo agoAs a traditional painter, I would love to see the individual pigments used, instead of dominant colors. I know this is not straightforward, but maybe doable to some degree based on the range of hue/value/saturation and context?
- mistrial9 4mo agofeedback -- painting and screen luminescence are fundamentally different. Secondly, the chase after "most famous" seems to show the motivation here. AI generated arts, IMHO, is an economic F-U to the people who spend real years of their lives to train in arts, and to the people who spend more time after that to teach.
- WindyBolt907 4mo ago[dead]
- FrozenThane269 4mo ago[dead]
- Grappelli 4mo ago[flagged]
- cosimo-dw 4mo ago[dead]
- Daub 4mo agoI have a history of research in computational aesthetics with an emphasis on old master paintings. A few notes: 1. You have used the RGB hue wheel not the RYB hue wheel. The later defines the complementary pairs red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple which are more useful for an artist when evaluating hue. To those who would say that the difference between RTGB and RYB complementaries is subjective, I would point out that the red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple pairs have been known by artists since before Newton first expressed hue on a wheel. 2. I think it is fair to assume an artist has a consistent color pallet, but I'm not sure that a genre would. 3. User S0und has implied that paintings have changed too much from their point of creation for your work to be valid. For sure it is true that paintings have oxidized, accumulated multiple layers of dust-attracting varnish and been damaged by UV exposure. However, the relative difference between the colors they have used remains almost the same, and this is where the value of your work lays. 4. The key problem of visualizing the color of a painting is its dimensionality. A standard histogram does a super fine job at expressing the lightness value of an image. A radial hue histogram does the same for the hue/saturation. But there is no 2D graphical visualization that does both. Personally, I would go further and visualize separately the hue, saturation and lightness signatures of the artists. For most pre-modern painters, the lightness values closely mirrored their saturation values. Artists like Gericault and most of the Impressionists learned to separate them. BTW... do you know this website?: https://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html https://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html
- ouli 4mo agoGreat points! 1. I'll try to add RYB option for color harmony wheel 2. You are absolutely correct, there are no consistent palettes across genres, but I thought it will be interesting to see multitude of palettes artists use for the same genre 3. User S0und's observation about oxidized or decayed colors is very interesting, but even with muted, brownish colors these artworks still look amazing. 4. Any suggestion how can I add such color visualization across body of work of a given artist or a style?
- Daub 4mo ago> Any suggestion how can I add such color visualization across body of work of a given artist or a style? I think that the best visualization of the colors of a painting is by using the painting itself. In class I demonstrate lightness by first desaturating the work (or copy pasting the L in Lab). I then do a controlled posterize on the image - basically a stepped curve in Photoshop. I try to isolate the dark, middle and light. These are relative values that can often manifest as lumps in the histogram. Painters tend to be very deliberate in the way they organize them. This page explains what I am getting at: https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/colour-lightness-tone?module_item_id=3189221 https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/colour-ligh... In my experience such posterizing is best done manually but AI might be able to do it. Hue at saturation are more difficult for the simple reason that they are difficult to disengage from lightness. Like lightness, saturation is generally organized according to low, middle and high. For most of art history, the saturation of a painting would closely follow its lightness. It was Gericault who separated them. Check out the saturation vs lightness of his Lobster painting for an example of this. Hue is a beast. Sure, most paintings done before the impressionists are pretty unsaturated. But even Rembrandt would be careful to use a red brown against a green brown. Check out the Rembrandt image on this page to see this in action. https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/colour-hue-and-saturation?module_item_id=3189222 https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/colour-hue-... I think that a radial histogram is the best way to visualize hue. This would show not only the hues but there relationship to each other on the RYB wheel and also there quantity. There should be a cut-off point for hue that is visible. In our work we established a cut off - all hues with very low saturation were ignored. Hope this helps.
- saltypixel 4mo agoAs a designer and creative director, I use Adobe Color and Pinterest for client branding/re-brand inspiration, or just straight to the pantone books. This is interesting to me as another tool. To expand the color variations, maybe get movements like Pop in there...maybe not 'masters', but would expand beyond the yellows and browns
- anthonycoslett 4mo agoThis is a gorgeous site and beautiful concept. I'm interested to learn what inspired you to create this contribution? I look forward to exploring it more especially as I decide what colors to paint the outside of my house as I attempt to "standout" in my New Orleans neighborhood.
- habitit 4mo agoNice! I can see a lot of like bloggers using this site like instead of getty image regarding a painting they can use this tool to get an image of a real artists work that matches the template of there website. I mean theres a few potentials and avenues to use this its just the main big one i see.
- xydac 5mo agothis is interesting, we should wire this to frontend design system library that automatically helps user use these palette.
- ouli 5mo agoThank you. Glad you find it interesting.
- nmstoker 5mo agoYes, exactly this. It falls far short of the potential if it just shows the colours alone and not how they might appear if applied to sites, charts, illustrations or whatever you might want them for.
- ouli 4mo agoI am planning to add a section where people can re-color their portraits, landscape images or even interior rooms using carefully curated palettes based on master painters palettes. Applying to websites, illustrations or charts also can be extremely useful.
- afolkest 5mo agoLove it. I'll be using this on a weekly basis in my art practice. Let me know if you ever create an API endpoint.
- ouli 5mo agoThank you for kind words! That was my exact intention to share empirically proven color palettes for artists and designers like you. Adding API endpoint is a great idea. I'll let you know when it will be ready.
- thangalin 5mo agoHey ouli, your hello email bounces. See also: https://amandahinton.com/blog/creating-a-color-palette-from-an-image https://amandahinton.com/blog/creating-a-color-palette-from-...
- ouli 5mo agoSorry for the inconvenience. The email works now. Regarding the article - I use similar ideas to extract colors form artwork images, only difference is I added color prevalence scale for each color and limited it to 10 colors per palette.
- oybng 5mo agoVery nice. My only gripe is the automatic page switching on scroll, never encountered that before and I absolutely hate it
- ouli 4mo agoI fix it. hope the new version provides better user experience
- ouli 5mo agoThank you for the kind words and insightful feedback. My intention with page-switching on scroll was to offer more color palettes without requiring extra clicks. I had some reservations about it too, but couldn't find a better way to provide a continuous feed of similar palettes. I'll work on improving that feature.
- oybng 5mo agoIt's very convenient, I wish I could offer a worthy suggestion. The trouble in my case is that it's very sensitive and the palettes are barely in view before the page refreshes, they don't reach the center of the screen. Thanks for sharing
- CSSer 5mo agoThe problem, from a UX standpoint, is that you need a visual affordance for the behavior. That is, you must indicate that it's about to happen and give the user the opportunity to abort. Alternatively, a continuous gallery could suffice.
- ouli 4mo agoAdding visual clues for automatic scrolling is something I really need to rethink in order to make this feature work as intended. Thank you for the hint!
- S0und 5mo agoAs an "expert viewer" of Baumgartner Restoration, this site usefulness is questionable. If you look at those color palettes, most of them brownish that is because of dirty & old oxidised varnish. These are not the intended look of these paintings. So these color palettes has nothing to do with those 3000 masters. https://youtube.com/@baumgartnerrestoration https://youtube.com/@baumgartnerrestoration
- 9dev 5mo agoIt’s the colours you will see today when looking at the paintings, however. Your point is valid, but even the somewhat "chromatically degraded" versions of many of these are gorgeous.
- jauntywundrkind 4mo agoIt was short but I really enjoyed this little thread this morning, added much color to my life! > Starting in the Renaissance, artists made sculpture and architecture that exalted form over color, in homage to what they thought Greek and Roman art had looked like. In the eighteenth century, Johann Winckelmann, the German scholar who is often called the father of art history, contended that “the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is,” and that “color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty.” When the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were first excavated, in the mid-eighteenth century, Winckelmann saw some of their artifacts in Naples, and noticed color on them. But he found a way around that discomfiting observation, claiming that a statue of Artemis with red hair, red sandals, and a red quiver strap must have been not Greek but Etruscan—the product of an earlier civilization that was considered less sophisticated. He later concluded, however, that the Artemis probably was Greek. (It is now thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original.) Østergaard and Brinkmann believe that Winckelmann’s thinking was evolving, and that he might eventually have embraced polychromy, had he not died in 1768, at the age of fifty, after being stabbed by a fellow-traveller at an inn in Trieste https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-wh... cited by https://bsky.app/profile/ellipticalnight.bsky.social/post/3ml4iuph5lc26 https://bsky.app/profile/ellipticalnight.bsky.social/post/3m... Man, what a line. What a horror, this projection of opinion! From the "Father of Art History"! To rob the world so! I feel this way all the time, that anti-sentiment, that the pure marble world just stately and so is art and perfection, over the colors of the universe & it's possibility! > "the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is" This should make your blood run cold, imo. A world locked in amber view of reality, static, sedate. Whew.
- code51 5mo agoWhy do I only see Claude in this UI? It seems Claude is picking up the very same color scheme for many webpage building requests.
- ouli 4mo agoIt is puzzling for me why you see these colors as Claude UI colors, since I carefully choose these colors as my main brand colors across all other art related sites (eg https://ouliart.com https://ouliart.com).
- NetOpWibby 4mo agoQuite possible Claude/Anthropic likes your colors
- ouli 4mo ago[flagged]
- NetOpWibby 4mo ago:) Thank you!
- animanoir 5mo ago[dead]
- Theodores 5mo agoI am currently looking for colour palettes and this website is of interest to me. Small snag, some UTF8 things are going on with some colour names, I am sure you know and have cursed accordingly. I like OKLCH colours and the ability to mix them in interesting ways using CSS things. This means I don't do hex codes for colours in CSS. I can translate though, however, soon some people will demand OKLCH, so you might as well add it in, trying to get it natural with the picker. I appreciate the masters but I wonder how this would work using other sources, for example, Sunday newspaper supplements from the last century, and their glossy adverts, which were to a higher standard than what we get today.
- ouli 4mo agoAdding OKLCH color codes will be a great addition. Thank you for your suggestion! There are 2 art style pages namely Advertising and Posters styles: https://paletteinspiration.com/advertisement-palettes/ https://paletteinspiration.com/advertisement-palettes/ https://paletteinspiration.com/poster-palettes/ https://paletteinspiration.com/poster-palettes/ I am aware that Advertisement palettes mostly based on Alphonse Mucha work since I could not include more recent ad illustrations for copywrite reasons.
- ouli 4mo agoAs you suggested OKLCH colour option is added now to the site. Thanks again.
- Theodores 4mo agoMighty impressed! You have done well by sharing your project 'warts and all' on HN. Thanks for listening, just that UX matter of 'loading next palette and you are good to go!
- ouli 4mo agoThank you for kind words! The loading next palette feature is fixed also. You can check it whenever you have free time.
- hparadiz 5mo agoI used to run an art social network 15 years ago that did this automatically with every piece of art uploaded and then it let you search for art by color that way. Basically $average = new Imagick( $file ); $average->quantizeImage( $numColors, Imagick::COLORSPACE_RGB, 0, false, false ); //Reduce the amount of colors to 10 $average->uniqueImageColors(); //Only save one pixel of each color