> IRIX is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is a variety of UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and the universally adopted industry-standard OpenGL graphics system.
My background is in computer engineering, but I've always been fascinated with the design of user interfaces. I tried as much as possible to mix my formal coding studies and work, with those of UI design. This led me to the creation of several apps and websites, some of which are currently published and listed on my personal website (https://albemala.me/).
While designing user interfaces, one of the areas I struggle with is color. Creating beautiful color combinations is very hard - at least for me! So I decided to create an app to help make this task easier.
Back in 2017 I started working on this project, and after a couple of months of development, I published Iris - Color Schemes Editor. I iterated on it quickly, publishing a few updates based on users' feedback. A good number of people were using it and found it useful, so I decided to move a step forward.
IRIX aims at being the definitive application for designers and artists to create beautiful color schemes. It is a full-featured color scheme editor and a collection of advanced color tools.
There are many tools around to work with colors. The web is teeming with applications to manage color schemes, test color contrast, extract colors from images, but they all have one or two features only. If you are a designer or an artist, you are probably familiar with that frustrating situation where you have three applications and five tabs open in your browser just to create a single palette!
With IRIX, the goal is to have a single space to work with colors and unify multiple tools into a single one (“A color app to rule them all”, someone could say…).
Some of the things you can do with IRIX include:
- Creating, editing, naming and organizing your color schemes.
- Fine-tuning the colors in multiple color spaces and giving them names (or let the app suggest a name for you).
- Generating color harmonies, shades, tints, and variations.
- Mixing colors in different color spaces.
- Extracting colors from images.
- Testing colors for accessibility issues (contrast ratio, lightness, color blindness…).
- Designing color schemes for infographics, maps, and presentations easily.
- Importing colors from other applications and exporting them to many formats, like text, file, and images.
- … And more!
IRIX is available on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
If you're a designer, for work or hobby, I hope you would find this app useful.
I would be glad to hear your feedback and thoughts on it.
Hi, you should change the name. You're using a registered trademark that looks like it's owned by patent trolls GPHI.
IRIX is a Unix OS. It's still used, still loved by people out there, just not developed or maintained. The rights however, are owned by some litigation-happy people.
Heads up: your app may turn out to be un-googleable because IRIX was a popular UNIX with sophisticated color management years ago, and modern day it's a photography supply retailer.
It might take a while to get on the 1st page of results.
> My background is in computer engineering, but I've always been fascinated with the design of user interfaces.
Forgive me if I’m being too critical, but I strongly doubt your background or enthusiasm are that extensive. The real IRIX would be well known to someone with that description.
On the opposite view, the full capitalization matches the original name, so it’s possible you’re trying to appropriate it.
Either way, change your project’s name or it’s going to be hurt by it.
That's a bit much. SGI IRIX is basically ancient history. The last release was in 2006, and SGI's heyday was the late 90's. If you were young or weren't online then, you wouldn't have a clue about it.
I agree he should've searched for the name. But to say he simply "should've known about IRIX" because he has a computer engineering background is wrong.
I’m in the UX/Human Factors Engineering field and hah, I too thought it was UNIX-related. Please consider changing the product name. I am guessing it is a play on iris but problematic for all reasons already outlined in comments.
Feedback: the site looks quite clumsy on iOS Safari (images and text content squished to fit on the screen).
I clicked on the toolbox link and the page worked well enough, the tools didn’t quite fit all the way on the page though. I have a smaller screen (iPhone 7) so that may be the issue.
Although the site mostly works properly without JavaScript, the actual download links require JavaScript to replace href="#" with the actual href, which is unfortunate.
edit: for those who are interested, try these
http://ciembor.github.io/4bit/
http://terminal.sexy/
https://bashcolors.com/
> IRIX is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is a variety of UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and the universally adopted industry-standard OpenGL graphics system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX
I'm Alberto, the creator of IRIX.
My background is in computer engineering, but I've always been fascinated with the design of user interfaces. I tried as much as possible to mix my formal coding studies and work, with those of UI design. This led me to the creation of several apps and websites, some of which are currently published and listed on my personal website (https://albemala.me/).
While designing user interfaces, one of the areas I struggle with is color. Creating beautiful color combinations is very hard - at least for me! So I decided to create an app to help make this task easier.
Back in 2017 I started working on this project, and after a couple of months of development, I published Iris - Color Schemes Editor. I iterated on it quickly, publishing a few updates based on users' feedback. A good number of people were using it and found it useful, so I decided to move a step forward.
Last year (2019) I re-designed and re-implemented the app from scratch, improving the overall experience and set of features. A few months of work later, IRIX 2.0 was ready (https://medium.com/@albemala/irix-color-scheme-editor-color-...).
So, what is IRIX?
IRIX aims at being the definitive application for designers and artists to create beautiful color schemes. It is a full-featured color scheme editor and a collection of advanced color tools.
There are many tools around to work with colors. The web is teeming with applications to manage color schemes, test color contrast, extract colors from images, but they all have one or two features only. If you are a designer or an artist, you are probably familiar with that frustrating situation where you have three applications and five tabs open in your browser just to create a single palette!
With IRIX, the goal is to have a single space to work with colors and unify multiple tools into a single one (“A color app to rule them all”, someone could say…).
Some of the things you can do with IRIX include:
- Creating, editing, naming and organizing your color schemes. - Fine-tuning the colors in multiple color spaces and giving them names (or let the app suggest a name for you). - Generating color harmonies, shades, tints, and variations. - Mixing colors in different color spaces. - Extracting colors from images. - Testing colors for accessibility issues (contrast ratio, lightness, color blindness…). - Designing color schemes for infographics, maps, and presentations easily. - Importing colors from other applications and exporting them to many formats, like text, file, and images. - … And more!
IRIX is available on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
If you're a designer, for work or hobby, I hope you would find this app useful. I would be glad to hear your feedback and thoughts on it.
IRIX is a Unix OS. It's still used, still loved by people out there, just not developed or maintained. The rights however, are owned by some litigation-happy people.
It might take a while to get on the 1st page of results.
Forgive me if I’m being too critical, but I strongly doubt your background or enthusiasm are that extensive. The real IRIX would be well known to someone with that description.
On the opposite view, the full capitalization matches the original name, so it’s possible you’re trying to appropriate it.
Either way, change your project’s name or it’s going to be hurt by it.
Apparently searching to confirm if a name is already taken is asking too much on this day and age.
Also, just wanted to let you know of this css bug in landing page on iOS [screenshot]. I noticed it because I had to fix same thing last week myself!
[screenshots]
https://i.imgur.com/xAxTzVf.png https://i.imgur.com/m7p1nkd.png
I’m in the UX/Human Factors Engineering field and hah, I too thought it was UNIX-related. Please consider changing the product name. I am guessing it is a play on iris but problematic for all reasons already outlined in comments.
Regarding the website issues - I'm working on an updated version and I'll try to address all the problems you mentioned.
As for the name - I agree with you, it's been a poor choice, I didn't do much research on it before publishing, mea culpa.
Apart from this, - Do you find the actual application useful? - Would you consider using it in your everyday work?
https://www.colorbox.io/
Announcement and motivation blog post:
https://design.lyft.com/re-approaching-color-9e604ba22c88
and HN discussion, 4 months ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21028361
I clicked on the toolbox link and the page worked well enough, the tools didn’t quite fit all the way on the page though. I have a smaller screen (iPhone 7) so that may be the issue.