Spectrum Generator

Pleyland’s Spectrum Generator allows you to generate colour schemes without the pesky business of directly selecting the colours.
With Pleyland’s Spectrum Generator you can generate a repeating or infinitely and unpredictably changing spectrum of colours by changing the frequency, phase, amplitude, and a number of other factors of 3 sin waves that serve as arguments for a changing RGB rainbow.

This method of mixing colours was originally developed by me in 2014 while creating a valentines day card.

Once a desirable palette has been selected, you can use it to draw while the colours change in real-time, and you can control the speed of change as well as the brush size during strokes using the keyboard shortcuts. You can use the program to create paintings like the one above. It’s fun because it can be unpredictable but manageable if you learn to paint in a rhythm

The app will also output the mathematical function that produces the spectrum so that you can copy it into your own project if needed, but I find that it's easier to just select the colors explicitly for whatever project you are working on, and instead just use the generator for inspiration.

Chaos occurs when the frequencies of the colors are not perfect factors of each other, similar to how dissonance occurs in musical harmony. This means that the colors will change inifnitely and seemingly randomly if the frequencies are not divisible, but if they are ratios of each other you can get some really nice gradients that have more interesting patterns than simple 1:1 ratios. This is the same way that chords work. I will be exploring this more in future with presets and harmonic noches on the sliders.

I have plans to expand this in future and make it fit better with my react website.

Tinker with the Spectrum Generator Here