Which color mode??

[Xhris]

There is little value in using the RGB colour picker.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I regularly use the RGB picker (both 2d and 3d mode). This is because it allows objects to be given colours that are of different hues, but are sufficiently related to not contrast badly. (Please don't drop that method of selection.)

Actually, while we're on the subject; some applications (MS Expression) allow 2D RGB colour selection where the colour bars show you what colour you would have if you increased the slider to that value, on the actual slider. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes not, but this isn't a feature Xara offers. A toggle option to allow this in the RGB colour selector is a minor thing on my feature request list.

[Charles Moir]

Wow someone who uses the 3D mode of the colour picker. That's a first for me.

I'm not sure I agree that using RGB sliders is better for colour relations. It requires some very un-intuitive leaps to predict what colour things are going to be. We found very, very few people understand this. e.g. you have an orange colour and want to make it more red say. Who is going to guess that to do this you move the green slider down? And this is exactly why we encourage people not to use the RGB pickers, because we know from experience that very few people can understand this.

(And that is partly why you sometimes see sliders trying to show you what the colour would be if you moved it. And for those who live in the RGB world this has some advantages. But that means the green slider shows a red graduation colour - and to many people that's even worse (i.e. more confusing) than what we have.)

Whereas using the HSV picker is far more predictable and more intuitive not just to pick colour, but to alter them. To make orange more red you move the hue slider towards the red. What's more it's also better for picking related colours because you can move the hue slider slightly to pick close variants. That's just as easy, if not more easy, than using RGB sliders and a lot more intuitive.

[eobet]

Wow, interesting read on the usability of the RGB slider!

To me, who has landed in design/illustration from the computer games/programming route, RGB sliders are natural to me, so I've never reflected over them. These days, though, I'm very interested in usability so reading this was a nice little revelatation and provided a good and informative perspective on how a new user could perceive the different sliders. Very well worded, Mr. Moir.

If I'm allowed to be critical, however, I'd call that over analyzing it, because another way of looking at it could be that a new user wouldn't care what the slider said (perhaps not even fully understand what RGB/HSV/HSL/YUV etc. meant), as long as it enabled the color transformations he wanted.

I guess it's all down to the type of user we're talking about (careful/experimental, etc.) and while oddly enough, I'd categorize most/many users on this forum as careful, the common profile of an artist would be more experimental... but Xara currently seem to target people who aren't artists or professionals, but rather beginners or hobbyists (at least, that's how I interpret the messages I receive from the design/profile of Xara and it's applications suite).

[Xhris]

...What's more it's also better for picking related colours because you can move the hue slider slightly to pick close variants. That's just as easy, if not more easy, than using RGB sliders and a lot more intuitive.

I guess this all depends on what is meant by colour relation. I’d agree that HSV is much more intuitive for colour selection because it doesn’t require colour spectrum knowledge. But while I use HSV probably more than any other method, the RGB (2D/3D) allows me to notice colours I just wouldn’t when using HSV. Using HSV, you are given the psychological impression that there are fewer colours – namely just the hues on the bottom. The shades of that hue still feel like it’s just that hue, but slightly “different looking” to put it crudely. Whereas with the RGB (3D mode in particular), you see a collection of rich colour swatches that seemingly allow you to notice more colours than you would if you only used HSV (as was me until not too long ago). The 3D RGB scheme shows you a swatch where one primary colour (which can be selected) is held constant, and all values of the other two primary colours are shown. By keeping one primary colour value constant, you can choose other related colours (this is what I happened to mean when I said "related" earlier).

Depending on what I'm doing with colours, I flip between the most appropriate colour models for the task. If I want control and intuitiveness, then it’s HSV, if I want inspiration or constant-primary-colour relations, then it’s RGB. The colour scheme you choose determines how you travel through the colour space as shown below.

[jclements]

Coming from an untrained background in regards to color/color space, I find Charle's comments dead-on about the UN-intuitiveness of the RGB sliders. [I do remember watching an experienced designer (unexperienced in Xara) using Xara's RGB sliders and also typing in values directly to adjust hues; it was a pretty humbling experience for me.]

When I first started using Xara, I didn't pay my attention to HSV so I used the CMYK model sliders because they WERE so INTUITIVE. Having K available for darkening things up was convenient (with more experience, I played with using darker mixes of C, M, and Y and not touching the K values).

[eobet]

Coming from an untrained background in regards to color/color space, I find Charle's comments dead-on about the UN-intuitiveness of the RGB sliders. [I do remember watching an experienced designer (unexperienced in Xara) using Xara's RGB sliders and also typing in values directly to adjust hues; it was a pretty humbling experience for me.]

When I first started using Xara, I didn't pay my attention to HSV so I used the CMYK model sliders because they WERE so INTUITIVE. Having K available for darkening things up was convenient (with more experience, I'd play with using darker mixes of C, M, and Y and not touching the K values).

Guess what the V stands for in HSV?

And that V (value) ties in with what Xhris said about the 3D mode in RGB, which is interesting because I use the HSV mode these days almost exactly like he describes the RGB mode. In order to sustain a certain color in shadowed areas, one generally has to increase it's saturation:

http://www.eobet.com/temp/hsv.png