Your Colors Suck (it's not your fault)

The first 100 people to use code ACEROLA at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni:

Digital color theory is a mysterious black box that few resources bother explaining, but how does it all work? Where did it all come from? And why are the color pickers in the art programs you use so bad?

Topics covered include: Quantization, color banding, dithering, value mapping, palette swapping, radiometry, photometry, how humans perceive color, colorimetry, spectral rendering, the rgb color model, deriving srgb, the hsl color model, gradient mapping, randomly generated color palettes, perceptual color spaces, the lab color model, oklab

Use the palette generator here:
(sorry website is down for the foreseeable future but there are much better color palette generators you can find lol this was for an experiment not meant to be used as an actual service)

Check out Evan's stream!

Photoshop OK Color Picker:

Support me on Patreon!

Socials:

References:
- Real-Time Rendering Chapter 8: Light And Color
- An Interactive Method for Generating Harmonious Color Schemes

Thanks so much to these artists!

Music:
Afternoon Break - Persona 3 OST
Master Of Tartarus - Persona 3 OST
This Mysterious Feeling - Persona 3 OST
Midori Eyes - Paradise Killer OST
During The Test - Persona 3 OST
Junes Theme - Persona 4 OST
New Game - WORLD OF HORROR OST
In A Moment's Time - Skullgirls OST
A New Frontier - VA-11 Hall-A OST
Every Day Is Night - VA-11 Hall-A OST
Underground Club - VA-11 Hall-A OST
Your Love Is A Drug - VA-11 Hall-A OST
Karmotrine Dream - VA-11 Hall-A OST
GO!GO!STYLE - Paradise Killer OST
Police Station - Persona OST

Thanks for watching!

This video is dedicated to my friend, Alotryx.

#acerola #graphics #gamedev #unity3d #graphics #shaders

[Acerola_t]

The first 100 people to use code ACEROLA at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni:

Back to basics with this one. Thanks for 100k subs! I will be making the 100k sub special in November, please look forward to it. Check out my patreon for the potential topics for next month though!

[Mogswamp]

Just wait until you get into color theory for print. If you think RGB sucks you should try CMYK

[blenderguru]

Honestly one of the best videos on color science on youtube today (and I've watched a lot!). Subbed.

[Seyferix]

This video feels like a severe case of ADHD that managed to condense years of Art academy in 37 minutes while still talking about the same topic, it's glorious!

[zxGHOSTr]

For those who want to try out the color generator, it can be used in the wayback machine in the internet archives.

[ferenc_l]

Acerola is the only person to make me drop everything i am doing to watch a 37 minute video about computer graphics

[drdca]

13:55 : I’ve heard that mantis shrimp perception actually just uses “which of the 16 cone types is responding the most in this region”, so their color perception is, weirdly, just 16 colors, rather than a point in a 16-dimensional space.

[HankW]

As somebody who has gone down the digital colour hellhole over the last few years, this video is QUITE GOOD. You've done a great job at summarizing many important concepts and this is a resource I'll absolutely be sharing with folks who I need to introduce the topic to in the future. Really well done!

[jotch_]

i suspect one major reason HSL palettes were still frequently picked is that it will sometimes "incorrectly" give you colors with more chromaticity. for a nice gradient, maybe you want one of those three parameters to remain constant, but for an artistic palette i would want at least one color that pops over the rest. if the OKLab generator was to occasionally provide a nice vibrant color along with the rest of the gradient, you might see even more people favoring it.

[LukaS]

Honestly, if more math teachers teached using graphical examples of what you can do with it like you do, I think quite a bunch of people would be more interested in mathematics, amazing video as aways Acerola.

[Foervraengd]

Most digital artists who have a more painterly art style usually start with a grayscale base just to establish the contrasting values, then we add color on top of that using adjustment layers that doesn't affect the values, only the hues. That way we keep the dynamic contrast and can still use whatever color sliders we have at hand. Coloring a grayscale base isnt a universal thing ofc, but it has it's roots from oil painting techniques where artists paint a sepia toned underpainting that serves the same purpose.

[Rohan-qkmd]

im a biology student, but the way your videos grab my attention is absurd please never stop

[datnastysalad]

I've been doing digital art in photoshop for a while now, and I always KNEW that the included color picker was frustrating because of the inherent values of some hues (e.g. fully saturated+luminant yellow is still a light value than fully saturated+luminant blue). I knew what I wanted in an updated color picker but couldn't even think how to describe it, and OKLAB is super interesting. This video had me glued to my screen and was hilarious the entire time, and I feel my brain growing wrinkles. This was super interesting, thank you for this video.

[Nehoz]

It truly amazes me how you can take such a seemingly small problem and dig into it to explain everything that is actually involved in solving it, which is a lot, while still managing to keep it all connected and fascinating. As a computer science student who is also into graphic design and painting, you genuinely make me consider taking a professional step towards graphics programming, which is something I didn’t even know about before I stumbled upon your channel. Thank for the inspirational videos and keep doing it like you do !

[TheScottWolcott]

My senior capstone project in college was about palette selection from still images. I don't know anything about shaders or color theory, but because I've your videos I have been inspired to dust it off and see if I can get it to compile again.

Edit: after jumping through a lot of hoops to make JavaFX work again, I got it to compile. 6 years ago me was not a good programmer. The basic concept was to analyze an image and select a limited color pallet that would keep that average (mean) color of the entire image the same. This mostly produced extremely ugly images, but occasionally made some really neat effects.

[onlysmiles]

"Oh, this sounds like it'll be interesting"

[15 minutes later]

"Ah yes, imaginary colors."

[VetNovice]

I felt so heard when you listed Color Theory as most complex. I tinker and obsessively toy with RGB hex values for a living. ❤ Massively useful banger vid as always.

[faik...]

I've always been struggling with colors because I am colorblind. So learning the theory has always let me understand everything more clearly.

[adissentingopinion]

As soon as I realized we were about to dive into color spaces and color theory, I buckled my seatbelt and called my parents in case I didn't make it. Glad to see you didn't self destruct half way through, only your clone :)

[eeriesnow]

1. I saw a pale magenta (like #ffa1e4)
2. As a digital artist who learned color/drawing almost entirely digitally, this is a really cool video to watch! Digitally picked colors are my favorite part of the process, and while I manage to be good with digital color it is at the cost of being able to do literally anything else intuitively. And yes, HSL is useful but it can be a nightmare in terms of picking colors that we actually perceive as brighter. For me I use a special color profile to check, alongside the old fashioned eye squint to determine value. Also, I'm out of luck.