adjust buildings hue, darken outlines

[nebulon42]

Starting from #1202 (comment) I'd like to propose a change were the hue of buildings is moved from the more yellowish HSV(39°, .07, .84) to the more reddish HSV(25°, .07, .84). At the same time the outline is darkened by 10% to now 20% from the fill for more contrast.

Previews (before on the left, after on the right):
These previews are outdated.

no landuse

industrial/retail/commerical

residential/place of worship:

garden/grass:

farmland/farmyard:

[matthijsmelissen]

Personally I think I prefer the old rendering (on a LCD laptop screen).

Would darkening the outline to 15% or 20% while keeping the fill the same be an option?

[nebulon42]

That would be an option, but more contrast would be better.

These are outlines darkened by 15%.

Apart from outlines I strongly suggest to change the hue. The improvement is not that visible on the images, so I suggest to try it live.

Ok, maybe I understood you wrong. You were talking about keeping the hue?
That is the first image in #1202 (comment). That doesn't look particularly good IMO. It looks great on the canvas, but not on landuses.

[matthijsmelissen]

@mkoniecz @pnorman What do you think?

[pnorman]

I'm okay with either, but the building outlines might need to have their weight adjusted.

[kocio-pl]

I like those slightly darker buildings more, but outline fix would be also good. The recent changes in buildings rendering were OK for me, but went just a bit too far.

[nebulon42]

I like those slightly darker buildings more

Just for clarifying: the buildings are not darker, it's just the more reddish hue that makes them look darker (and of course the darker outlines).

On another monitor I tested the yellow hue issue wasn't that amplified as on my monitor, still I would like to shift the hue more towards red. I think this is not a big change. I'm open to all suggestions how dark the outlines should be.

[pnorman]

Just for clarifying: the buildings are not darker, it's just the more reddish hue that makes them look darker (and of course the darker outlines).

HSV(39°, .07, .84) has a lightness of 70 while HSV(25°, .07, .84) has a lightness of 61. If you want to say something the same lightness, chroma or hue you can't work in HSV but need to use a perceptual colour space.

[vholten]

HSV(39°, .07, .84) has a lightness of 70 while HSV(25°, .07, .84) has a lightness of 61.

However, what is actually used in the code and on screen are the RGB values, and in RGB the two colors are (214, 209, 200) and (214, 207, 200), so only the G channel differs by two units. This corresponds to a very small change in lightness.

[pnorman]

However, what is actually used in the code and on screen are the RGB values, and in RGB the two colors are (214, 209, 200) and (214, 207, 200), so only the G channel differs by two units. This corresponds to a very small change in lightness.

Ah - typo in the conversion.

[nebulon42]

I see I stand corrected. :)

[nebulon42]

I think more important than adjusting the hue would be darkening the building outlines. I have made another attempt in changing the hue a little bit to red, from Lch(84, 5, 88) to Lch(84, 5, 80). But this can also be left out if there is no support for it. Outlines are still darkened by 20%.

no landuse

industrial/retail/commerical

residential/place of worship

garden/grass

farmyard/farmland

(note that the changed forest symbology is apparently a TillMill caching issue)

[althio]

+1 for outlines by 20%.
The hue modification is maybe a step on the right direction, but too subtle to make any real difference to my eyes and screen (only +1 on red channel RGB?).

[pnorman]

(note that the changed forest symbology is apparently a TillMill caching issue)

After any PNG or SVG changes, you need to restart TileMill or Kosmtik. If that doesn't solve it, there's a cache folder in the TileMill directory you can clear.

[nebulon42]

The hue modification is maybe a step on the right direction, but too subtle to make any real difference to my eyes and screen

Maybe it is too subtle, but I wanted to keep it low since changing back to red doesn't seem to be too popular. I would be open for more red. Maybe the maintainers could clarify which change (hue and/or building outlines) would be an option for them, if any. Thanks.

[matthijsmelissen]

I don't have a strong opinion.

Perhaps you could state again what goals you are trying to accomplish, or what problem this is meant to solve?

[nebulon42]

After the change in building colours (which I still think was a necessary improvement) the representation of buildings on landuse colours suffers from rather low contrast. Especially on the grey of residential landuse the current buildings hue results in a dirty, yellowish light-brown.

Buildings as they are now look great on the empty canvas, but not so good in combination with landuse=residential and other landuses such as industrial/commerical/retail/farmyard:

To solve the low contrast issue I suggest to darken the building outlines by 10% more:

This improves the situation, but there is still a slightly dirty, yellow-brownish look. Therefore, I would suggest to shift the hue (and only the hue) of the buildings colour slightly towards red:

The colour shown here is now Lch(84, 5, 75). This is a bit more towards red as the Lch(84, 5, 80) depicted in #1208 (comment).

However, the main improvement IMO are the stronger building outlines.

[matthijsmelissen]

Thanks for the clear write-up.

I think the new outlines are too strong compared to other features, in particular roads:


Maybe 15% (increase of 5%) would be a good compromise?

[nebulon42]

Yes, 15% would still be ok for me. What do you think about the hue change?

[matthijsmelissen]

I support the hue change, now you break it up in steps I see what you mean.

[nebulon42]

Based on the discussion so far the new proposal would then be a building colour of Lch(84, 5, 70) in contrast to the currently used Lch(84, 5, 88) and darkened outlines by 15% in contrast to the currently 10% darker outlines.

no landuse

industrial/retail/commerical

residential/place of worship

garden/grass

farmyard/farmland

[matthijsmelissen]

Looks good to me. Can you update the PR?

[nebulon42]

Looks good to me. Can you update the PR?

Ah, I did that already (before I commented). :-)

[matthijsmelissen]

Ah, I did that already (before I commented). :-)

You're right, I was confused by the fact that Github says that the last commit was authored 15 days ago (but it is in fact the latest change). Some aspects of Git(hub) remain a mystery to me.

[nebulon42]

Since I always squash updates only the initial commit remains and that might be 15 days ago. So technically Github seems to be right, but it could be confusing.

On the other hand, another process related question: Do you prefer squashed updates all the time or to see the update history with squashing occuring just before the commit?

[matthijsmelissen]

On the other hand, another process related question: Do you prefer squashed updates all the time or to see the update history with squashing occuring just before the commit?

To me either is fine, I'm not sure what the others think.

[matkoniecz]

To me either is fine, but it certainly should be done before merging (to avoid multiple "fix/change stuff" commits on master, like it sometimes unfortunately happens).

[nebulon42]

Thanks.

[daganzdaanda]

Cool, I think this is some good finetuning!