Lately I have been noticing how I have not had to name colours as often. As more and more colours are being added everyday, I wonder if COLOURlovers will ever run out of colours?

It would make sense. There is only so many colours that can be crated and once they have all been named...then no new colours will be out there!

So just guessing...if the hex number choiced go up to 255. Cubed and averaged, I am guessing the max of colours that can be selected are 16,600,000. So with only about 1,200,000 named at the moment, we have about 15,400,000 left?!? (Wait, that seems to not make sense)

Before I confuse myself, what do you think of this? Will COLOURlover one day run out of new colours? (It's a bit of a scary thought to think that we may only be able to make patterns and palettes)

Multiply that by 100 for tint!

There are many hex #'s that seem not to be able to be selected by using the color pickers in COPASO or the regular palette maker. If you use manekineko's transmonster, you usually get to name all five colors. Also, if I really want to add a color name in a specific palette, and it's already taken, I just change one of the hex characters by one digit or letter, and then usually it allows me to name it.

So I think we've named a lot of the colors that these color pickers will show us, but they don't allow you to select the full range of hex values. I'm not sure how this works exactly, but I'm sure it's complicated!

n!na wrote:

Multiply that by 100 for tint!

n!na, unfortunately, that's not the case. winged victory's calculation does include all possible tints and shades.

I have noticed that it seems particularly hard to come up with an unnamed red. Perhaps red (including all tints and shades) is the most used of all colors?

don't worry, chromageddon isn't near... but damn! i'll be freaked out when it comes !!

chromageddon = funny!

it's at least 5 years out no worries ;)

barely 1/16 of the colors have been discovered, you're just looking in the wrong places, send me a note if you wanna know how to hit new ones more often

Hey now manekineko that is one interesting comment! Colour Dowsing. Do you need a forked hazel stick?

I guess some magic couldn't hurt ... what I've found is that the in house pixelator here gives a very limited range of options, same with the suggestion tools when you make a palette.

Your odds of getting new colors also go way down when you start with popular colors as a base because the art skool matches are often going to have been used already, and for some reason a lot of people buy into that jazz

All straight grays have already been discovered, a few early members went on a run a few years ago and r'fed em all up so if you get a 5c5c5c or f5f5f5 those will never be new.

I guess the short version would be that using the CL tools or doing color theory matches to popular CL colors aren't going to reap many new colors, transmonster gets new all the time because it's not using CL tools or color theory as a base, that's all

Fun discussion. I had always assumed (wrongly, I'm learning!) that they retired color names after some time period.

A very easy way to get new colors is to use a proper colorpicker. ColorZilla for Firefox is the one I use to snap colors from full-size Flickr/Wikipedia images. Gets me new colors all the time :p

Maybe once all the colours are named, we could start re-naming those colours that all have the same name. Or start again - like a sort of "second generation" colourlovers. aaaaaargh!

I promise to always keep the color love evolving... don't worry about running out of fun things to do with color ;)

sixteen million colors have GOT to last a long time, dont you think?
also, I have noticed i have a hard time naming reds, like lovers have said here *points up*

Lulu 05 wrote:

don't worry, chromageddon isn't near... but damn! i'll be freaked out when it comes !!

What I like to do is use the Meyerweb colour blender to blend two extremely similar colors. If I like a blue, I blend that blue and another blue so close that my eye can't really tell the difference. I then run through some of the in-between colours generated to see what's been named already. I'll take the hex code and plug it into a URL, because all colours have a URL of http://colourlovers.com/color/HEXCODE/NAME, and you can just take out the /NAME part of it and go to the same place.

I think, like manekineko said, it's mostly the tools that are spinning up the same colour. There's a lot out there...

that's a great link, gonna work some of it into my own scripts

Well, that little color picker will only show about 3,375,000 colors.

Seems like i'm looking in the wrong places for colours then! Chromageddon....that is a funny word. And how scary would it be if colours ever ran out?! Tho we would then be able to figure some way to fix it....it would be cool if we were able to adjust the shine or gloss. Like paint.

Love hearing everyone's view on this!

I am quite sure that when 16-bit colors run-out, colourlover will offer 24-bit colors or even 32-bit colors. It is almost impossible to name all colors in 24-bit or 32-bit...

Colour naming get boring then... you will have some hundreds of colours hardly identifiable with various different names. Hey, isn't 16-bit palette sufficient for static purposes? Sure 24-bit would be interesting, but 32-bit or above will not make a difference except for sole colour namers. Or that some users are able to identify every single colour visually in 32-bit or even 64-bit?

klip wrote:

Hey now manekineko that is one interesting comment! Colour Dowsing. Do you need a forked hazel stick?

i just had this problem this morning. i wanted to make a new colour name so i opened a new tab and put it on colour search. when i had the colour i wanted i put that hex into the search until it came up with no results. i went through no less than 20 named colours before i found one i could use. :P

Lulu 05 wrote:

don't worry, chromageddon isn't near... but damn! i'll be freaked out when it comes !!

Chromageddon... priceless! ^_^

Even if we run out of colors to name, the combinations are practically endless so I think it will all be okay. Plus if we actually DO run out of combinations... we'll just play it like we did in the 80's and make like tons of homages from the old palettes! It'll be great!

The problem is that older monitors only display 256 colors. Even if you specify a different color, the monitor dithered it to the nearest one, depending on your browser, version and computer. The concept of 'web safe colors' limited us even further with 216 colors that appeared (sort of) the same across PCs and MACs. Web developers have gotten used to clicking the "Web Safe Colors" box when they create images 'just in case' one or two users still have one of those gigantoid CRT monitors that are increasingly lining the streets on trash day.

As of 2007, PCs have at least 16-bit color and usually 24-bit (TrueColor). Even cell phones have at least 16-bit color. "Web-safe" colors aren't exactly needed, but web-developer culture still embraces them, like a comfy winter coat from the 80's with gigantic shoulder pads that you drag out every Fall because it still fits (except that the buttons fell off years ago, but you can still hold it closed with your elbows and it looks ok, doesn't it?)

hmm...maybe we can figure out a way to make visible uv or infra-red rays. i read that some insects can see uv rays...wonder what that looks like!