Top
Best
New

Posted by ouli 4 days ago

Show HN: Explore color palettes inspired by 3000 master painter artworks(paletteinspiration.com)
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.

214 points | 82 commentspage 3
xydac 4 days ago|
this is interesting, we should wire this to frontend design system library that automatically helps user use these palette.
nmstoker 4 days ago||
Yes, 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 4 days ago||
I 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.
ouli 4 days ago||
Thank you. Glad you find it interesting.
frangonf 4 days ago||
As a gruvbox enjoyer, I approve.
austinjp 4 days ago||
So... 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.

oybng 4 days ago||
Very nice. My only gripe is the automatic page switching on scroll, never encountered that before and I absolutely hate it
ouli 4 days ago||
Thank 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 4 days ago|||
It'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 4 days ago|||
The 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 4 days ago||
Adding 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!
ouli 4 days ago||
I fix it. hope the new version provides better user experience
mannyv 4 days ago||
app version?
ouli 4 days ago|
coming soon
Grappelli 3 days ago||
[flagged]
WindyBolt907 3 days ago||
[dead]
CalmBirch127 4 days ago||
[dead]
cosimo-dw 3 days ago||
[dead]
huflungdung 4 days ago|
[dead]
More comments...