The Bench

The Bench (梅皿, umezara, the plum-blossom dish pigments are mixed in) is a single window where colours from any other window can be laid side by side, compared and mixed. Open it with ⌘B, or press B over any swatch to send it there.

Columns

Each column holds one colour and its full values. A column that came from a palette stays linked to that palette in both directions: change it here and the palette follows, and the other way round. A column that came from anywhere else is staged: it lives on the Bench alone. Columns rearrange by dragging.

Two columns

Three

Reading the gutters

Between neighbouring columns, a gutter reads the difference: ΔH in hue, ΔL in lightness, and ΔE overall. The footer names the space those deltas were computed in, because a Δ without its space doesn’t mean anything.

Wells

The MIX control in a gutter opens a well between two parent colours. A well is defined by a ratio plus white and black, and its colour is recomputed live from its parents. Change a parent and the mix follows.

Mixing is spectral, not an average of two RGB values, so blue and yellow make green. The ramp behind the RATIO slider shows the path the mix takes.

A well opened between yellow and blue, and the ratio taken from one parent to the other

A mixed colour is marked DERIVED, so it never passes for something you sampled. Two buttons under it take it out of the well:

Add to palette offers this window’s palette and any other you have open.
Add to Bench stages the mix as a column of its own, tagged DERIVED · STAGED, made here and belonging to nothing yet. A staged mix stops following the well: change a parent afterwards and the column keeps the colour it had.

The mix staged as a column of its own, tagged DERIVED

The tweak editor along the bottom edits whichever column is active, in RGB, HSB, HSL or CMYK. It always names what it’s working on (ADJUSTING · EUCALYPTUS), and while a well is open it reads MIXING · PYTHON YELLOW ⇥ NIGHTLY ESCAPADE instead, so there’s never a question about which colour a slider will move.

One column is always active. By default it’s the most recent one you added.

The header says what the window is doing: 3 BENCHED, or 3 BENCHED · 2 SHOWN when the window is too narrow for every column, or MIXING WELL while a well is open.

⌘K clears the Bench.

The Bench with nothing on it