kubouch / Base16.jl

Base16 theme generator based on k-means clustering

Base16.jl

Base16 theme generator based on k-means clustering.

About

The program takes an image and generates a base16 based on the colors of the image. The algorithm is based on basic k-means clustering with a trick: Since the first 8 colors of base16 are supposed to be a gradient, before the clustering, it first selects a "base color" and generates a gradient from it by varying its luminance. Then, the 8 colors of the gradient are passed, together with other 8 randomly initialized colors, as the means to the k-means algorithm. However, to keep the gradient colors unchanged, they are omitted from the update step -- they still participate in the assignment step so the other colors clusterize around them, but the gradient does not change its values.

It's just a fun experiment I'm doing when I don't have the energy to work on anything else. Also learning Julia along the way.

Features

• Creates a palette of 16 colors matching the base16 convention; the output is 16 colors in a #ddeeff format.
• Basic k-means algorithm as described above
• Color spaces used when running k-means:
  • RGB (uses HSL internally to scale brightness)
  • Lab
• Visualization:
  • The palette colors
  • The palette colors shown in a 3D plot with the picture's pixels (in a color space that was used for the calculation)

Improvement ideas

• Better base color selection (e.g., fitting a line through the color space instead of taking a mean)
• Improve the last 8 colors so they do not overlap with the gradient colors
• Better means initialization (e.g., k-means++)
• Select the gradient based on low-frequency components and the last 8 colors based on the high-frequency components. This might lead to the gradient matching more the smooth / background colors while the rest of the color would pick up the details. Maybe?
• CLI options instead of values at the top of the file
• Wrap it in a Nushell plugin

Installation

You need to have Julia installed (tested on 1.7). Then, just run the Base16.jl.

The Release.jl compiles the project into a sysimage that you can use later to speed up the script startup from outside the Julia REPL.