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This is a tool for finding distinct colors/groups of colors.

I originally made this for the routesetting team at the University of Pittsburgh Climbing Wall, to help them decide on the best tape colors to use to mark their routes.

Pick some colors.

clear selected colors

From the colors you selected, you want the 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 groups of size 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 that are the most distinct from each other.

I calculate the difference between groups as the average of the color difference between each color, that is, for two groups of three colors, I find the difference between the two first colors of each group, the difference between the two second colors, and the difference between the two third colors, and average them.

You can weight the average with these sliders. The further right you slide, the more important the difference between colors in that position will be to the overall difference. For groups of size one, the weight doesn't matter, and if you don't want to weight the results at all, leave the sliders alone or slide all of them all the way to one direction.

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