This is to announce an exciting upgrade to my very useful sanzo_colors node.

Sanzo_colors is based on A Dictionary of Color Combinations published in the 1930s by Japanese artist Sanzo Wada. The original node was based on volume 1, which organized colors into palettes of two, three, or four colors. The upgrade incorporates volume 2.

Volume 2 is organized in a more complex way. It has palettes of from two to eight colors based not on palette size but on other seasonal and design groupings. There are palettes for each of the twelve months, plus palettes drawn from kimonos, clothes, tapestries, carpets, earthenware, books, posters, and wrapping paper. It uses the same colors from volume 1 plus 12 additional colors.

The updated node incorporates all these new combos and colors while retaining its simple interface. You choose a numbering system (combos, colors, etc.) , pick a number from either volume, and then choose an output (swatches, colors, or table).

I made the following changes:

• Numbering. In addition to Combo Number, Color Number and palette sizes from Duos to Quartets, I have added Quintets, Sextets, Septets, and Octets. The new sizes only return values for volume two.
• Volume. One or Two. Volume One behaves just as the original node did and uses volume one combo and color numbers. Volume Two uses volume two combo and color numbers.
• Number. The combo or color number. If you number by palette size, the number will step sequentially through all palettes of that size starting with 1; if you enter a number greater than the number of palettes available for that size, it will return nothing.
• Output. Swatch, Color, or Table as before.

I made several other modifications:

• Spelling Errors. I corrected almost a dozen spelling errors and irregularities in the color names from volume 1. The color names now match perfectly between the two volumes
• Duplicate Colors. The published books include three cases where the same color name is used for two distinct colors. I resolved this by adding A and B variants to the color names:
  • Eugenia Red - A / Eugenia Red - B
  • Grayish Lavender - A / Grayish Lavender - B
  • Pale King's Blue - A / Pale King's Blue - B
• Duplicate Palettes. Volume 2 includes one combo, 154, which has two different palettes. I choose to keep only the first of these.
• Hex Codes. I adjusted the hex code conversions from the original CMYK values in the published books. My data sources for volumes 1 and 2 used slightly different systems for this conversion. For consistency I converted all hex values to match those used in the second volume, which are based on Japan Color 2001 Coated color profiles. In most cases this change is very subtle; the colors are now sometimes slightly brighter and slightly more saturated than they were before.

Although the books themselves are in public domain, the work of converting them to nodes requires a lot of work. I received invaluable help in this from others who did this work and generously made their datasets available:

• Volume One. Original dataset by Dain M. Blodorn Kim, improved by Matt DesLauriers. MIT license and details at https://github.com/mattdesl/dictionary-of-colour-combinations/blob/...
• Volume Two. Dataset courtesy of Kurt Higa, developer of the Wada Colors app for the iPad. I strongly recommend downloading this app; in addition to all the colors from both volumes with many filtering options, it also has a feature that can extract Sanzo Wada colors from any photograph or image. For more information see https://wadacolors.com

The attached demo shows a range node that feeds into the sanzo_colors node to produce three different palettes from volume two (see screenshot).

I use this node constantly for my art. I often get most of the design working before deciding on my final colors. This node allows me to feed in palettes of given size and then step through them quickly to see how the colors play together in the design. Even if I don't end up using one of these palettes, the ability to quickly play with many different color combinations helps me decide on my final combination.

Enjoy!

For more about Sanzo Wada, see this thread: http://support.nodebox.net/discussions/general-discussion/15394-vid...