Color Curious Lite app for iPhone and iPad

Color Curious? Instantly identify any color by name!

Ever looked at something and wandered what color it is? Want to know what name best describes the color you see - or the color you cannot see due to color blindness? Whether you are simply curious, or truly unable to perceive differences between certain colors, Color Curious is for you - it is a simple app designed to answer a simple question: "What color is it?"

How does it work?

Take a photo with your camera (in the full version of Color Curious you can also pick a photo from the albums on your device, including saved photos from Web pages and emails). With the photo loaded, get color names by scrolling the image under the crosshairs in the center of the screen - crosshairs mark the point at which color names are reported instantly, in real time, as you explore the image. (Full version of the app supports pinching/double-tapping the photo to zoom in and out.)

What kind of color names does it use?

Color Curious uses a standard set of color terms based on the NBS/ISCC system - idiosyncratic, meaningless color names are not used. Color space is divided into fifteen distinct hues such as "yellow", "greenish yellow", "yellowish green", etc. For each hue, degrees of saturation and brightness are specified by modifiers such as "vivid", "dark", "pale", etc. The system produces color names that are meaningful and understandable without requiring additional reference, such as color charts or samples.

What makes Color Curious different from similar apps?

Picking colors by touching the area of interest directly is not optimal because the finger tends to obscure the view, so you never know exactly where on the image you touched. Color Curious does not have this problem, so you can always see precisely, down to the pixel, where on the image the color name comes from, while enjoying a fully interactive, explorative experience.

Other design features of Color Curious you will enjoy:

* Absolute simplicity.
* The photo is "king" of the interface - there are no toolbars, menus, or buttons to reduce the viewing area, and the few controls that are absolutely necessary are transparently overlayed on top of the image.
* Lightning-fast, real-time color name identification for instant gratification.

Enjoy the world of colors around you - explore it with Color Curious!