Basic Color Scale for first 10 to 20 colors?

[BarrySumpter]

Hi all,
I'm trying to plot points on a map.
Each with different colors.

I found a list of LC colors

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   answer colorNames()
end mouseUp

Is there a standard colors list beyond the basic colors and is there a standard order?
Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange - ???? then what?
say the first 20 or so colors?

Perhaps a graphics artist would know this?

[dunbarx]

Barry,

You only need four to unambiguously color a map. More might be prettier, but superfluous.

Craig

[AtoZ]

I'm a retired art director who worked with colors for many years. The quick answer is that there is no standard order of colors in the graphic design field, nor any area more open to personal preference. But perhaps in other fields, perhaps cartography, some "offical" organization may have established an "offical" list for their specialty. Others more knowledgable in those fields will have to speak about that.

You may already know this, but if you would like to see the LiveCode standard colors, rather than just a list of their names, there is a stack named "Color Names Reference.rev" that is included in the LiveCode documentation that comes with the LiveCode installation. (It's probably burried quite deep in your file folders -- I found it 9 levels deep -- so I suggest just searching for the file name.)

I personally don't like the way the colors are arranged in this stack (it's actually hard to see any arrangement other than small clumps of similar colors). I thought that I might modify the stack for a more useful arrangement, but the stack is somehow protected so that you can't access it's scripts. Perhaps someone else can enlighted us as to how to do this. In the mean time it's better than nothing.

Good luck with your project.

[BarrySumpter]

Hey AtoZ,
Thanks for the post.
Welcome to the board.
You're industry experience will be a great reference.

----

Perhaps I should reduce the scope of the query to just Standard Colors from Win Apps.
Like MS Word.

Standard Colors.gif (10.35 KiB) Viewed 3810 times

Or Paint Shop Pro.

PSP.gif (4.14 KiB) Viewed 3809 times

Or REALbasic.

RealBasic.gif (19.91 KiB) Viewed 3809 times

Yeah, ok. I'm getting a pattern here of no standard.
But if I had to pick from say 20 colors,
for map pins to stand out on their own
what would those colors be?

Maybe just make them all the same color
and settle on single character alpha and numeric text.
Where 36 different chars is too many to distinguish.
But maybe up to 10 or only 5. Depends on the situation I guess.

Ok pretty much no standard for basic map pin colors.

[AtoZ]

Barry,

There are real difficulties trying to come up with a list of colors that will be distinct from one another in all instances. First there there is the question of what the background color will be behind the colored object (pins in your case). Then there are the varying kinds and instensity of light in which the colors will be viewed, And most problematic in my view, the question of varying degrees of color calibration on viewers' computer screens and printers. It's a real tangle of possibilities and limitations.

I'm afraid I can only offer two ways to proceed, either:

1) Use your own judgement along with a good dose of trial and error, or

2) Try to find someone else who has already faced this problem and steal (I mean be inspired by) their choices. For instance, I believe that Google Maps allow you to create custom maps with colored push pins. As I recall they have less than a dozen colors to choose from.

I suspect that you will have trouble coming up with 20 easily distinguishable colors, especially for such a small area of a typical push pin. Using a combination of colors and text/number labels might be your best bet.