Color Pickers Software Are Not Really Accurate

Color picker software was introduced to me by my former CTO in my previous company. They're essential for graphics designers as well as to developers. We used HueGo Lite as our color picker. But recently, I just found out that color pickers are not really accurate. Let me tell you why.

Before I continue, I must say that I have offended some of the contributors of open source community. In my last post, I reluctantly judged a certain open source third party library. I quickly edited my post though the damage has been done, and someone told me that maybe I should start learning about open source community and stop writing - hell no, I won't stop writing, even if my grammar fails, even if my sentences cannot be understood by anyone, even if it takes my time. I don't know man, I just love writing my feelings, tutorials, and stuff on a blog, more specifically - on this blog.

Going on, I remember my former CTO mentioning in his video that he'll tell us (the audience) that he will someday make another tutorial exclusive for his company employees about knowing if a third party library is shit. So yeah, again, I stand corrected, I shouldn't have said what I have posted in my last blog post, but I ain't quitting blogging. :) I am a fan and user of 3rd party libraries and planning to write my own open source libraries in the future - when I become good in writing codes lol. Cheers.

Alright, back to this post. So I downloaded a free software called Color Picker for Mac. I believe I found it on App Store. Then I began picking some common colors from my designer's wireframe for our freelance project. I thought everything was fine. Then he noticed when I run the project in a simulator that the color of a certain control is different from his design, he then gave me the hex code for that control. Check out this experiment that I have done:

I have here a paintbrush for Mac. I have drawn here a rectangle filled with a flat color with a value of 0x83C22E.

Then I tried reading the color using two free softwares.: HueGo Lite and Color Picker.


First candidate: HueGo Lite

Thanks to HueGo Lite for the free software :)

As you can see, the readings of HueGoLite is really different from what it should get. I believe it's possible to fix it, please do so, HueGoLite team!


Next candidate: Color Picker

The readings of Color Picker

Thanks to Color Picker develop/s too! It has ready made codes for developing! Yes!

The Color Picker has some ready codes to copy and paste! Cool! However, the result is different as well. Color Picker got the same value! Woah! Now I don't really know what's the purpose of these color picker softwares.


The Last Hope: Paintbrush

Yey! Way to go, Paintbrush!

Paintbrush got 100% correct result. I am not sure what's going on here. But way to go, really, Paintbrush.

CONCLUSION:

I now I know what software should I use to pick a color correctly. The two softwares mentioned above, the HueGo Lite and Color Picker are cool free software for fast and easy color picking without having a screenshot file. Less hassle, but not so accurate color result.

Paintbrush on the other hand is 100% accurate but you have to have a screenshot result first, a new file which you'll certainly decide to delete it - just a bit of extra pressing of mouse but correct result.