I implemented something like this for an application I wrote once. The algorithm you're implementing chooses N evenly-spaced 3D grid points in the RGB color space. I found that this didn't give a terribly good result, because our eyes are far from being equally sensitive to changes in red, green, and blue at different points in the color space.

Anyone know of a better algorithm? As a first cut, probably using HSV space would be better, but you wouldn't want to sample it evenly -- you'd probably use a whole bunch of gradations in hue, but only a few in saturation and value.

I probably just ought to spend some quality time with Google. Given how important this is for things like MPEG encoding, I'm sure somebody's come up with a color space that approximates an even spreading of perceptual differences. Well, "approximates" it for "most" people, or something.

Then you'd just have to implement a "red/green colorblind" mode that a user could select, with a very different sampling space...

In reply to Re: Generating Visually Distinct Colors by sfink
in thread Generating Visually Distinct Colors by japhy

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.