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Painter's Picker Release Notes

2.2 2/24/2008

  • Painter's Picker now supports custom color spaces (such as color spaces that derive from color profiles). It will accept them, work within them, and report them to the user.
  • Painter's Picker now officially requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later
  • Fixed a problem where Leopard would not report Painter's Picker's name correctly in the fly-away menu of the color picker
  • Some UI redesign
  • updated website information within the program
  • improved the ability to paste the registration code into the registration dialog
  • hopefully fixed an incompatibility with GL Golf

2.1.1 11/26/2006

  • added a "Visit Website" menu item in the star menu
  • added a link to the website on the first page of the manual

2.1 6/4/2006

  • Painter's Picker is now a Universal Binary.
  • New pdf manual documentation
  • added a color info button to the interface to make getting information for the colors in a scheme easier
  • The color wheel can now display a background color for better previewing how a scheme will work against a certain other color (usually a neutral color)
  • Added 6 new schemes
  • Painter's Picker will now default to black if no other color is set by the host application.
  • Added icon previews in the schemes menu (for Mac OS X 10.3 and later)
  • Fixed a bug where the color info menu could report the wrong hue angle
  • Fixed a compatibility bug with iWork 2006
  • Fixed an incompatibility with Comic Life
  • Fixed a bug where loading Painter's Picker from a color well inside a utility window would cause the host application to crash.
  • Numerous small aesthetic changes
  • Numerous architectural changes and speed and memory usage optimizations

2.0.7 8/5/2005

  • Changed the brightness & saturation menus to show more presets. Instead of just every 10%, they now show every 5%.
  • Improved the appearance and performance of the custom popup buttons.
  • Improved the responsiveness and display of the sliders when changing their values with the scroll wheel.
  • added access to the color info menu to the brightness presets control. right-click any of the four preesets ro get a color info menu for that color.
  • Improved the behavior of the hue angle slider and made it work better with One Finger Snap.
  • Improved the layout of the controls and renamed the Actions menu to the star menu.
  • Fixed a bug where the registration reminder dialog would sometimes not appear when chosen from the Actions menu.
  • Lots of under-the-hood redesign.

2.0.6 6/11/2005

  • Painter's Picker will now accept a color that has been calibrated to a custom color space, as can be done from the RGB slider panel in Tiger.
  • Some aesthetic improvements, especially in Apple Mail
  • Updated Painter's Picker to work with Konfabulator 2.0
  • The registration dialog has been updated.

2.0.5 3/9/2005

  • Fixed an incompatibility with Apple's new iWork suite that caused the hue angle slider to not be drawn correctly

2.0.4 1/17/2005

  • When Painter's Picker first loads, it will once again pick up the current color from the Color Panel rather than always starting with a default red color.
  • Painter's Picker will now load properly in BBEdit 8.0 and above
  • Fixed an incompatibility with Konfabulator that would cause Painter's Picker to continually beep rather than change its color. Other applications that include a color swatch inside a modal dialog may also be fixed with this change.
  • Added a workaround for an incompatibility with Konfabulator and Painter's Picker's registration and create color list dialogs.

2.0.3 9/19/2004

  • fixed a bug where Internet Explorer could not read the help files
  • fixed a bug where Painter's Picker would not load properly if it was installed on a case-sensitive file system (such as UFS or NFS)
  • The "Create Color List" sheet will now resize appropriately without looking horrible
  • Finally, Painter's Picker appears as one file rather than as a folder

2.0.2 6/28/2004

  • added a workaround for an incompatibility with iMovie 4.0 that could cause iMovie 4.0 to crash.
  • improved the appearance of the help button in Mac OS X 10.2.x

2.0.1 5/24/2004

  • fixed a bug that caused NovaMind, and possibly some other applications, to work poorly or even crash.

2.0 5/17/2004

  • fixed a bug where entering a mathematical expression with a parenthesis could crash the home program.
  • added online help
  • added a help button

2.0b2 5/8/2004

  • Painter's Picker will now work in BBEdit version 7.1.4 or later. Since earlier versions of BBEdit were not compatible with Painter's Picker, it will refuse to load in earlier versions of BBEdit.
  • Optimized drawing of the color wheel and color sliders under Panther.
  • If you choose a new color in another picker, such as the crayon picker, and the new color is a part of the current scheme, then Painter's Picker will now select that color and leave the scheme alone. Before, it would set the color as the key color, and you could loose your last color selection that way.
  • Fixed a bug where Painter's Picker wouldn't handle pattern-style colors well, such as after certain colors had been picked from the "Developer" color list in the Color Palettes picker.
  • cooler scheme - shows incrementally cooler colors from the key color
  • warmer scheme - shows incrementally warmer colors from the key color
  • lighter scheme - shows incrementally lighter colors from the key color
  • darker scheme - shows incrementally darker colors from the key color
  • New icon.
  • New layout that gives the color wheel more space while moving other UI elements into the background.
  • New, slimmer popup buttons to save screen real estate and give more feedback.

2.0b1 3/21/2004

Version 2.0b1 added several new features, but more than anything, it represents a nearly complete redesign of the back-end of Painter's Picker compared to version 1.1.

  • Web Safe Color Space - Now you can use Painter's Picker to choose related colors that are sure to show up the same on any browser that supports color. The palette of web-safe colors is its own color space, equivalent to CMYK or RGB, so any color you choose will work in any browser as long as you use the Web-Safe color space.

    • For the web-safe color space, added a system for demonstrating the confidence Painter's Picker has in the relationship between colors. Colors whose arcs are larger are actually closer to the real color that Painter's Picker has calculated. When the different colors in a scheme are not very closely related, a circle is drawn based on the size of the key color's arc. The more divergent the colors in the scheme are, the darker and wider the circle will become.
    • When choosing any of the "nearest web safe" options in the color info menu, the color space now changes to the "Web Safe" color space.
    • In the "Web Safe" color space, if the current hue, saturation, and brightness of a color being displayed do not match the hue, saturation and brightness calculated for its current position, then the check-mark does not appear beside "web safe" in that color's info menu. Choosing "web safe" from the info menu will change the key color to the closest web-safe color to that color.
    • double-clicking the key color while in web-safe mode will now change the key color to the nearest web-safe color first, then a second double-click will change to the previous or next scheme

  • New Color Schemes - Version 2.0 includes some new color schemes

    • golden tetradic - a tetradic scheme built around the angles of the golden rectangle
    • golden triadic - a triadic scheme built around a 36-36-108 isosceles triangle
    • golden complementary - a split-complementary scheme built around the golden triangle (72-36-36)
    • golden alternate complementary - the same colors as the golden complementary, but with the actual complementary color added as well.
    • golden split complementary - splits the two complements of the golden complementary scheme into four complements.
    • 10 color wheel - divides the color wheel into 10 evenly distributed colors.
    • compound analogous - combines into one scheme all the colors from the other 4 analogous color schemes, for those times when you want a full range of analogous colors.

  • Exporting to a Color List

    • Version 2.0 adds the ability to export to a color list. At any point, you can choose "Create Color List" from the Actions menu and a color list with the current colors in your scheme will be created and added to the "Color Palettes" color picker for future use.

    • Note:, if you have the color panel open in more than one application when you create a color list, then you may need to quit and reopen the other application before the color list will appear in its color palettes list.

  • User Interface Improvements

    • Added the ability to enter mathematical expressions into the text fields, including a few common constants like pi and phi and also the ability to translate radians to degrees. All together, this makes it possible to enter this kind of expression: pi/6R + 45*7 (which, by the way, is 345 degrees).
    • For a long time, double-clicking on the key color would switch Painter's Picker to the next scheme. This is still true, but now holding down the option key while double-clicking will instead move to the previous scheme.
    • using your scroll wheel outside of the color wheel will now rotate through the schemes list.

  • Bug Fixes

    • The large and small color wheels now synchronize when the user selects a different color than the key color. Before, selecting a color in one wheel would cause the other to set that wheel as key, which could get confusing.
    • Changing brightness, saturation or color space when the selected color is not also the key color no longer resets the selected color.
    • Improved the accuracy of color calculations for the artistic (RYB) color wheel.
    • Changed the way that Painter's Picker drags colors to make it more compatible with some programs.
    • Painter's Picker doesn't steal the keyboard focus nearly as often, so using it doesn't require nearly as much window-clicking as before.

1.1.3 1/25/2004

  • The color wheel and swatch will now respond to clicks even if the color panel was not the front window.
  • Painter's Picker was causing a crash in BBEdit that we have been unable to track. Painter's Picker no longer loads in BBEdit, so at least it will no longer cause a crash.
  • Fixed a typo in the register sheet.

1.1.2 12/29/2003

  • Fixed a bug where the info menu would not work properly in applications that use a modal color panel (such as Adobe Photoshop).
  • Improved the display of the info menu within Mac OS X 10.2. Some items were too long before and so were being clipped in the menu.

1.1.1 12/23/2003

  • Removed a checkbox that would appear in Mac OS X 10.2 as a result of legacy code. If you need to access the "draw color wheel behavior", please use the Actions menu instead.
  • Changed the resizing behavior of some controls for aesthetic reasons.

1.1 12/22/2003

Version 1.1 makes several changes, both in terms of functionality and interface. They all fit into roughly 4 categories, User Interface tweaks, bug fixes, a new color info menu, and some new support for web designers with html-style color strings and web safe color navigation.

  • Info menu

    • Added a color info menu. Control-click (or right click) on a color in the color well to bring up a menu that shows both information about that color and also other colors related to that color.
    • Within the info menu, added the ability to recognize if a given rgb color is web safe. In an rgb color's info menu will be up to 8 colors labeled "nearest web safe color". These are the colors within the web safe color space whose rgb values are closest to the selected color's values. Choosing one of them will make that color the key color. If one of them is exactly the same as the given color, then it will have a checkmark beside it.
    • Within the info menu, added the ability to copy the html-style string for an rgb color. When viewing a color's info menu, simply choose the item titled "html string" and that string will be added to the clipboard to be copied into any program you would like.
    • Within the info menu, added the ability to copy either rgb or hsb values for rgb colors, or cmyk values for cmyk colors in the same way as html strings.
    • Within the info menu, added the ability to switch to the nearest color in another color space. RGB colors have an item in their info menu called "nearest cmyk". CMYK colors have one called "nearest rgb." Choosing these will change to the given color space and set the selected color to be the key color.
    • Interface Changes

  • Completely rearranged the user interface to make it more spatially oriented and hopefully more logical.

  • Colors that are very close to white are now drawn with a gray outline around them inside the color well.
  • Added the ability to drag directly from the color well or the swatch view. Before, a user could select a color in the color well, then drag the color from Apple's color swatch. Now, users can drag colors directly from the well either to the palette below the picker, or directly into any UI element on the screen that will accept a dragged color.
  • Added scroll wheel support for the brightness, saturation, and hue angle sliders. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, simply hover over the sliders and then turn your scroll wheel to adjust the sliders. Turn quickly to jump around, or slowly to make very precise adjustments.
  • Added scroll wheel support to the color well. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use the scroll wheel to scroll up & down to adjust the brightness. Using the scroll wheel to scroll left to right (holding down the shift key while scrolling) adjusts saturation. Hold down the option key and turn the scroll wheel to change the scheme.
  • Added a button to the small view to quickly and easily expand the color panel to show the extra sliders and controls. Some users were not aware that resizing the color panel would show more controls.
  • The color wheel in the miniature view will now resize to fit the color panel.
  • Made all the menus use the same font size. Before, menus varied font size depending on where they were loaded (Mac OS X 10.3 or higher only).

  • Interface Changes

  • Fixed an incompatibility with OmniGraffle where Painter's Picker would fail to appear or fail to resize properly inside Omnigraffle's custom color palette. Painter's Picker should now work perfectly within Omnigraffle.

  • Fixed a bug where the registration sheet would not appear in applications which use custom windows for their color picker (such as OmniGraffle)
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes the color wheel in the large view would ride up and end up clipped behind Apple's color swatch.

1.0.2 11/20/2003

  • Fixed an incompatibility with BBEdit where BBEdit would sometimes crash when the user clicked on the hue angle slider.

1.0.1 11/15/2003

  • The Actions popup menu button should not have its title clipped any longer.
  • When using Painter's Picker within Photoshop, the contextual menu would sometimes be disabled. This has been fixed.
  • The contextual menus now report with a check if the currently selected color matches a given preset.
  • The "tight analogous" scheme would not allow the user to select the color counterclockwise from the key color. This has been corrected.

1.0 11/12/2003

  • The brightness, hue angle, and saturation fields now allow for up to 2 decimal places of precision.
  • Added a contextual menu to the hue angle slider for quick access to some common colors.
  • Added a contextual menu to the color well for quick access to the different schemes.
  • Added a contextual menu to the brightness slider and saturation slider to make selection of specific values easier.
  • Added several new color schemes to the scheme selection menu:
    • alternate complementary
    • tetradic with key color
    • narrow tetradic
    • narrow tetradic with key color
    • tight analogous
    • loose analogous
    • very loose analogous
    • 12 color wheel
  • Added an "Actions" popup menu to the small view, to allow users to do almost everything they would otherwise do in the large view from one popup menu.
  • Made a couple aesthetic improvements.
  • Fixed a very minor display glitch where the split complementary, analogous, and tetradic schemes would overflow into the hue angle slider
  • Registration is working

0.7 10/29/2003

  • Painter's Picker now correctly identifies itself if you mouse over its icon in the color picker toolbar or if its icon is in the overflow menu of the toolbar (before it would identify itself as "Crayons").
  • Double-clicking on the key-color (the color chosen in the hue angle slider) will rotate through the available schemes.
  • Added a "brightness and saturation presets" control that gives you the full, half bright, half saturated, and half bright and saturated colors for the currently selected hue angle. This will come in handy if white is the current color when you open Painter's Picker and you want to see the hue angle slider...
  • Changing from the artistic to the standard color wheel now carries along the color that was key, changing the angle instead. Before, the angle would stay the same and you would no longer be looking at the same color you had picked before.
  • added tooltips for color well
  • added a "small view" set of controls (just the color wheel), for times when you want a very small color picker window.
  • added a watermark to the color wheel to remind users that this is beta software. In the final version, this will report if it is not registered.

0.5 10/18/2003 * first public release