I want visually distinct colors!

Generate palettes of optimally distinct colors.

How does it work?


Starting from a set including all X11 colors, the script will first remove darkest and brightest colors according to the values you have set for minimum luminosity and maximum luminosity.

It will then build a subset of n colors where each color is visually the most distinct possible from every other colors in the set. For this, colors will be manipulated in the CIE Lab color space, where the distance between colors is a perceptive distance (this means that if two colors values are close to each other, they will also look similar to you and if they are distant, they will be perceived as distinct colors).

Resulting palettes are ranked according to the minimal pairwise distance between colors composing them, the greater the best so. This is the number shown on the left of the palettes. The number of remaining colors after filtering dark and bright colors is also shown, as the number of random palettes generated before returning the best one.

Palette settings


At least 2, more colors means less distinct they will be

You can exclude darker colors

You can exclude brighter colors

The more loops the better the results, but slower!