Personel Palettes Application


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Atttibutions:

I have used Icons from TWG if you like them, they are available at: http://blog.twg.ca/2009/09/free-iphone-toolbar-icons/

I have borrowed some HMI concepts from the "Palettes" Application within my colour editor, and I would like to thank R. Maddy for the use of those concepts.

Personel Palettes

A Color Palette Application that is practical and useful for each and every one of you.

 

Finally, a simple tool to pick the perfect colors for your bedroom wall, a curtain fabric or your fashion wardrobe.

 

The genesis of this application came from a friend wanting to transfer their seasonal fabric color swatch on their iPhone so they didn’t have to carry around a clumsy collection of fabric samples. Some research revealed that every fashion designer worth their salt had their own seasonal color swatches, and they change them every year, so I need to build a generic tool that can quickly import any color swatch.

 

Features:

Ø  As many colors as you want in a Color Palette without limit.

Ø  As many color Palettes as you want without limit

Ø  Preloaded with 4 seasonal color palettes

Ø  Fills your display with a selected color

Ø  Supports 5 color models. RGB,HSV,HSL,CMYK, and Gray scale.

Ø  Supports 3 different styles of color editor.

Ø  Supports choosing colors from an image, either from the camera or photo albums.

Ø  Emailing palettes to your friends and clients.

Ø  Designed for both iPhone and iPad.

 

It is not intended for designing new color palettes, it lacks the color blending tools for doing that efficiently, it is primarily for utilising an existing color palette.

If you form the opinion that it is a very simple and easy to use application, then I have achieved one of my goals.

Mission

 

My primary mission in writing Personnel Palettes was to flood your IPhone or IPad with a selected color, so that you can compare it fabrics and paints with it.

This is achieved by selecting a color and tapping in middle of your device, this will cause all the controls to disappear. Tapping a second time will bring them back.

 

Usage Scenarios

Organization of Data.

The application is shamelessly modelled on the Mail application.  Individual colors have replaced email messages and Color Palettes have replaced email folders.

 

There are two tiers to the simple data model:

            1. Each color palette has a name, a description and a delete lock.

                Each color palette has a colletion of colors.

            2. Each color has a name attribute, and a color value

Application Opening

It opens with a view of the “Inbox” rename “My Palette”.

 

On an IPhone the application opens with a table view of the default palette, that I have called “My Palette”, there is nothing sacred about that name and you are free to rename it. By default “My Palette” contains three colors, Red, Green and Blue.

 

The three colors are just example colors as the application is more intuitive if you start with some colors in a palette.

 

Selecting a color in the TableView will navigate to a display of that color’s Detailed Color View. The detailed view just displays the color name and fills the background with the selected color.

 

The Detailed Color View has controls in a toolbar that lets you edit the Color, add a new color to the current Palette or delete the selected Color.

 

Tapping on the centre Detailed Color view will hid the controls and status bar. On an iPad this works best in Portrait view

 

On an IPad the application opens with a split view,

Email

 

The application allows the current palette to be emailed from the “Current Palette Table View” by using the “Mail” icon on the toolbar at the bottom of the table view.

 

You can also email a selection of palettes from the edit mode of the Palettes Table View by selecting the Palettes to be sent and using the “Mail” icon in the toolbar at the bottom of the table view.

 

The application can be opened with an email attachment, sent from another user of the application.

Detailed Color View.

The Detailed Color View is a very simple , it has a label which displays the color name, and displays the color value as the background color of the view.

 

The Detailed Color View provides the following controls

Current Palette Table View

The current palette Table View displays the currently selected palette in a Table View.  The currently selected color is checked, on the IPhone the need for this is less as the Detailed Color View is not visible at the same time, but it does show what was recently looked at.

 

The Palette Table View has a toolbar at the bottom of the Table View which provide two icon controls:

The Palette Table View also has a Navigation Bar.

In edit mode the Table View becomes a multiple value selector, for a collection of controls displayed in the Edit Mode toolbar at the bottom of the table view. The controls are as follows

Palettes Table View  

The “Palettes” Table view displays all your color palettes in a table view. The currently selected palette is ticked.

 

This view is primarily a selector, selecting a palette will navigate you to the “Current Palette View” populated with the selected palette.

 

The cells of this table view show the name of the palette, the number of colors in the palette and the first 30 colors (based on current sorting).

 

The view has a Navigation Bar, the left button is a Navigation control back to the previous Current Palette Table View, the right Button is an

Edit button. This button toggles edit mode for the Table View.

 

In edit mode the Table View becomes a multiple value selector, for a collection of controls displayed in the Edit Mode toolbar at the bottom of the table view. The controls are as follows:

On an iPad the Color Details View is also displayed when in Landscape mode. The effect of the controls on the Detail Color View change when this view is selected

Palette Editor View.

 

This is presented as a Modal Dialog on iPhone and as a popover on an iPad. It allows the Palette Name and a Palette Description to be edited.

 

Also a Palette has a delete lock that prevents a Palette from being inadvertently deleted.  This View also shows a palette Number which is a read

only attribute assigned sequentially as palettes are added. This attribute is not editable as it is used to select which palette is first displayed.

 

The “My Palette” palette is always number 1, so it is a good idea to keep it around to ensure you know what will displayed by default when the Application is started.

 

The Save and Cancel toolbar Buttons behave as expected.

Color Editor

The color editor is a Segmented Button controlled view and as is the most complex part of the application.  It started life in a class called the “Simple Color Editor”,how inappropriate that became. It provides 3 distinct color editors in a Tab controlled display.

It is displayed as modal dialog on the iPhone, a popover on the IPad.

The color editor has a toolbar showing “Cancel” and “Save” buttons as well as an Add icon button.

There are three tabs: Picker, Sliders and Images.

You can edit the color name from any Tab.                                       

The three tabs are closely coupled, if you change a color in one tab it will update the color in all the Tabs. You can select a color from an image and then switch to the sliders tab to see its color component values.

The Picker Tab allows a color to be selected by dragging the cross hairs to select a Hue and Saturation, and then the Brightness I bar to select brightness. The Brightness bar shows the range of colors available given the currently selected Hue and Saturation.

The Sliders Tab allows a Color Model to be selected, and then sliders are presented to allow the components of the selected Color Model to be modified.

The value of each component of color is also displayed in a text box, which displays the value of the color component in the selected display style. The value may be entered via the text box if desired. Beneath each slider is a color gradient which shows the range of colors available with the slider, if the other components stay static.

Selecting the CMYK or Gray Scale color models and modifying the color will cause the color to be stored internally in that color model, otherwise an RGB color model used to store the color. When a new color model is selected a conversion between color models occurs to present the closest color in the selected color model. The “real” color is not modified unless the color is edited in the new Color Model.

The Images Tab presents a largely empty tab with two additional controls in the ToolBar, the Color Name and currently selected color ifany are displayed..

The Image Pickers are displayed as a modal dialog on the iPhone, in a popover on the iPad

Once an image is selected, the Images Tab will calculate an average Pixel value over the middle ninth of the image. Think of the major squares in a Suduko puzzle, the application averages only over the middle major squre. The idea was that the edges of the image may contain odd pixels that would throw off the average, and calculating an average takes some computing resources and only using the middle ninth has a nine fold performance improvement.

 

Unless the image is of a single color which is the intended usage, this value not likely to be useful, but will be displayed as the “Selected” color initially

 

You can then scroll the image to select a pixel under the cross-hairs, and an exploded zoom view under the cross hairs shows a 5x5 Pixel display is also displayed a. Selecting the Pick button will selected the chosen color as the selected color.

 

You may select the “selected” color choosing between the average color or the picked color using a segmented control.

Restoring the Application.

The application has a few options for restoring itself, but they take some faith ! You have to delete all the palettes to activate them.

So you have broken the application, you have accidentally deleted your color palette.

Can you get it back ? Well if you have backed it up yes.

 

Simply delete all the color palettes, restart the application and it will restore any backed up color palettes.  Be careful with backup, it will backup the selected color palettes, butit will first delete all the previously backup color palettes. Emailing them to yourself is a valid alternative, that has no side effects  

 

If you did not back it up, well if you delete all the color palettes and restart the application it will restore the  default set of color palettes your had when you first started the application.

 

In passing, once you have deleted all the color palettes the application will only allow you to add a new palette or terminate the application.

4.3 Sdk Issues

The advent of 4.3  happened late in the development of this application for me and introduced one issue that are less than optimal.

The “use” button on the camera User Interface has a significant pause after its pressed, a spinner was added to the User Interface, but it is not 100% satisfactory.

 

Version 1.2 Known Issues

 

Unfortunately the cross hairs on the Image Picker was "crushed" ina late edit of that view, as is not visible. Will be Fixed in Version 1.3