Documentation

Good Color General Description: This is the question you probably want answered: What is Good Color and what can you do with it? Good Color lets you choose visually appealing colors. It helps you choose good colors. Good Color helps you make a choice in several different ways. Good Color lets you use color wheel theory to choose colors. The use of a color wheel is an accepted method for selecting colors that "go" with other colors. Good Color provides a list of well-known colors that you can choose and use with a single click of a button. Do you know you need to use the color "mauve" but you don't know what "mauve" is really? Good Color provides a selectable list of both well known and often unknown colors. Simply click on the color (because you see the actual color) to use it or you can use this functionality to see what the numeric values of that color really are(maybe that is all you really want to know). Good Color provides many themes that are known to be popular. A "theme" is a collection of different colors. Good Color lets you use a photograph you imported from your cell-phone to choose and use a color from that photograph. Good Color lets you see what different types of objects would look like if you painted them your selected colors (your theme colors). The presently supported types of objects are vehicles, houses, and clothes. You can see what a house would look like if painted a certain color. You can see what different types of vehicles (truck, SUV, sedan) would look like if they were painted a certain color. You can see what a shirt or a dress would look like if they had a certain color. Good Color lets you create your own color wheel. Perhaps you do not wish to use the standard painter's color wheel. If so, you can slightly or greatly modify the usual color wheel to suit your needs. Good Color lets you use several different color models to specify and modify colors. You can use the RGB, CMY, HSV, HSL, YIQ, and YUV color models for color manipulation. Good Color lets you use 26 different foreign languages. Good Color is strongly internationalized. If you want to use some other supported foreign language while you use the program (other than English perhaps) then you can do so. You merely click to choose your new language and the program commands are now output in that new selected language. You can also read the documentation in the various foreign languages. The usage of foreign languages in Good Color does not depend on the locale you have set on your computer. Usage: Start Screen: On the first screen you see several buttons on the left, a black cube in the center, several buttons on the right, and three input fields in the upper center part of the screen. The buttons on the left provide high level functions. The Create Color button causes the color of the on-screen cube to become the 1st of your theme's colors. Since the beginning color is black the cube in the center is black. If you press Create Color now you make the 1st color in your theme to be pure black and you shift to the Theme screen. If you want your first theme color to be something else then you can do that in several different ways. The most obvious way is to enter the RGB values of your preferred color in the three input fields in the upper center part of the screen. If you did that you would see the black cube take on a different color. Pressing Create Color then would make your 1st theme color to be that new color. If you did not want to enter RGB values (perhaps you only know the HSV values of the color you must use) then you could click on the Edit Using HSV button to go to the screen which lets you set the HSV for the color. Similarly, you could use the other color models(CMY, HSL, YIQ, YUV) too. Yet another way to select your starting color is to click one of the buttons in the lower right half of the start screen. If you click "Aquamarine" then the color cube would become aquamarine in color. Note that the button for Aquamarine is in fact displayed in the color aquamarine. If the named color you want is not in the color list you see at first then you can click Show More Colors to see even more available colors. You can keep clicking Show More Colors until you get to the last available colors (there are 8 of these sublists of colors). If you want to go back to see a previous sublist then you can click Back to go back to a previous sublist. Another way to get a start color is to click on Get Color From an Image. You then have to select the name of a photograph. These images (photographs) must be JPG/Jpeg image files that you have placed in the saved_images directory of Good Color. To get a color from an image either click on a point on the image or click on the Find Dominant Color button. Use Find Dominant Color when your photo contains only one color (the dominant color is the average color of the image). Then click Exit to go back to the start screen. The final way to get a start color is to click Load Theme in the start screen. If you do that then you will need to select one of the available themes. A theme has 1 to 5 colors. The pre-created themes all have 5 colors.. Theme Screen This is the screen you see if you click Create Color in the start screen. For the purposes of this discussion go to the start screen and click Denim then click Create Color. If you do that you will see the Theme Screen which has 1 theme color. At this screen you see see 7 column titles, 1 theme color line, and several buttons at the bottom of the screen. The first column title is Theme Color and under it you see a blue or denim color rectangle and an unchecked selection box. This is the color of the 1st theme color. The color line is everything you see reading from left to right starting with the unchecked selection box and the denim color rectangle. The title "1 More Good Matching Color" shows two color rectangles and 1 clickable plus button. This column is what color wheel theory thinks is the complementary color of this theme color. Since the theme color is a blue then the color wheel thinks an orange is the best matching color. If you click the + button, you will create 1 more theme color (the complementary orange). The + buttons for "2 More", "3 More", and "4 More" do the same thing: add the remaining colors to the theme. For example, because orange is created by adding a yellow to a red the "3 More" button shows a red and a yellow color in addition to the blue/denim color. The "Closest Theme" column shows the theme which is the closest match to the present color. Specifically, of all the available themes, this theme has a color which is the closest to the color for this theme line. Clicking the + for "Clostest Theme" causes 4 more colors to be added to the present theme. The color which is the closest to the present theme color is NOT added but rather is replaced by the present theme color. The "Next Closest Theme" + button does the same thing only for the second closest theme. If you do not wish to use the + buttons on the 1st theme line to create the 2nd color you should click Start To Create New Color to go back to the start screen. There you could enter the RGB values for the 2nd color, then click Create Color, then you would be back to the theme screen where you would have 2 theme colors and 2 theme lines. If you decide you want to save your present theme you click Save All As and specify a theme name. Later, when you restart the program you can use Load in the theme screen to load that theme you created to continue working on your theme. If you have several theme colors but do not want to save all of them as a theme you can use Save Selected As to only save certain theme lines (the ones you have clicked on) into your saved theme. Or you can select theme colors you no longer want and use Delete Selected Colors to delete those theme colors. If you want to create a new theme color which is the average of existing theme colors then click to select some theme colors and click Average Selected Colors. Averaging is done on a component by component basis. Assuming RGB, the reds are averaged, the greens are averaged, and the blues are averaged. To compare numeric values of theme colors click Display Selected Colors. To see what various types of objects would look like if you colored them with the theme colors you click Compare Selected Colors. Then you would see what a house would look like if it was painted the color of the theme colors. You see what various types of motor vehicles would look like if you painted them the theme colors. You would see what different types of clothing would look like if you painted them the theme colors. There is only 1 type of house in the present version of this program but there are several generic types of vehicles and clothing. If you wish to edit a theme color then click to select a color then click Edit Selected Color. On that screen you see the various numeric values of the color as they are in the color models. Also in that screen you can click to edit the color using one specific color model using bivariate projections. For example if you selected the Denim theme color then hit Edit Selected Color then hit Edit Using HSV you would three different panels. The leftmost panel keeps the Hue fixed but shows how the color would change if you modified the Saturation and Value. Click somewhere withing this panel to select a new color which has the same hue but has different Saturation and Value specifications. The middle panel keeps Saturation fixed but varies Hue and Value. The rightmost panel keeps Value fixed but changes Hue and Saturation. Click Reset This color to incorporate your changed color back into the actual theme color. You will need to click Reset This Color again in the Edit This Color screen to complete the reset of this theme color. After you do, you'll be back in the theme screen and you'll see your updated new theme color on it's color line. The bottom six buttons on the theme screen allow you to add theme colors based on how many colors you have now and how many more you want to add. For example assume you only have two colors. Then if you want a third color which is the best color according the color wheel theory (assuming you keep the starting 2 colors) then you would click Create Theme of 3 Using Selected 2. Alternatively, suppose you presently have more than 2 theme colors. Select the 2 you want to use as a base then click Create Theme of 3 Using Selected 2. The remaining 5 buttons work the same way only on different numbers of colors in the base and producing different numbers of new theme colors. In the start screen you can change the color wheel in use by clicking Edit Color Wheel. If you do that then you see the present color wheel presented in the standard circular shape in the center of the display. You see rectangles which have the color for their location on the wheel and you also see the RGB values of each color wheel position. If you enter new red, green, or blue values for color wheel locations then you have changed the color wheel in use. At the upper left you see the 7 functions for changing the color wheel. The Load button lets you load a saved, named color wheel to be used. The Save Color Wheel button allows you save the color wheel you are presently using. You can click Delete Color Wheel to delete any color wheel that you have previously created. Suppose you have modified the present color wheel but now you want to go back to the usual, standard color wheel. You click Set Edit Wheel to Default Color Wheel make this change. Suppose you have created a new color wheel. Perhaps you have only made some small changes to the default wheel but now you always want to use that slightly modfied color wheel whenever you use the Good Color program. To always use your improved wheel first save your new wheel under some name. Then click Set Start Wheel to set the start wheel to be your improved start wheel. Now, whenever you start Good Color it will load and use your improved color wheel. If you later change your mind and decide to go back to the default wheel then click Set Start Wheel to Default Color Wheel and the operation of Good Color goes back to it's original operation. Of course, you can always delete Good Color and reinstall it if you want to go back to "business as usual" too. The color wheel in Good Color is the usual color wheel used by most people. Painters use it a lot. However, there have been several color wheels in history. Sir Isaac Newton created the first color wheel. Good Color is designed to help you choose a "good" color. If you see no need to use some esoteric theory to choose a color then you do not need Good Color. If you actually do not know which colors are suppposed to "go" with other colors then Good Color will be useful to you (to stop mean-spirited, self-righteous, egotistic critics from making fun of your choice of colors, hopefully). Good Color can help you decide what color to paint your house, to choose which car has the best color, or to choose the shirt or dress with the best color. Those who use makeup could use it to choose the color of the makeup. Or, in general, for artistic purposes you could use Good Color to choose matching colors (for painting, for setting colors inside some computer program, for choosing the best colors for skins inside a game).

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