Show HN: Explore color palettes inspired by 3000 master painter artworks
12 points by ouli 2 hours ago | 6 comments
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.


thangalin 11 minutes ago
Hey ouli, your hello email bounces.

See also: https://amandahinton.com/blog/creating-a-color-palette-from-...

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afolkest 30 minutes ago
Love it. I'll be using this on a weekly basis in my art practice.

Let me know if you ever create an API endpoint.

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ouli 24 minutes ago
Thank you for kind words! That was my exact intention to share empirically proven color palettes for artists and designers like you. Adding API endpoint is a great idea. I'll let you know when it will be ready.
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oybng 6 minutes ago
Very nice. My only gripe is the automatic page switching on scroll, never encountered that before and I absolutely hate it
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xydac 30 minutes ago
this is interesting, we should wire this to frontend design system library that automatically helps user use these palette.
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ouli 27 minutes ago
Thank you. Glad you find it interesting.
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