Every color

I wanted to generate an image containing every color, so here we go.

This not-so-handy tool is ready to make any image you want! Just simple these simple (I swear, it’s simple) instructions.

Skip to installation or script usage to start making images right away or scroll down a little bit to learn how this works and look at some finished images. Also check my Instagram profile to see more of my work!

How it works

This is how the script operates:

It starts by generating and empty grid as big as the final image and a list containing every color with the wanted bit depth
It puts a starting point (or more, according to the parameters) with a random (or not, again, according to the parameters) in a set location in the image
It calculates all candidate pixels (empty pixels neighboring a colored one)
It iterates over all pixels until we find the one with the least minimum (or average) neighborhood color difference (the selected pixel)
It fills the selected pixel
It loops throught steps 3-5 until all colors are placed
It saves the final image.

Outputs

You can find a few more images inside the output folder or on my Instagram profile.

Minimum selection, random color sorting

centered start

Started with a random pixel in center

centered start

Started with a random pixel in center

2 points random

Started with 2 pixels in random positions

4 points random

Started with 4 pixels in random positions

5 points random

Started with 5 pixels in random positions

4 points corners

Started with 1 pixel in each corner

Minimum selection, hue color sorting

centered start

Started with a random pixel in center

corners start

Started with 1 pixel in each corner

Average selection, random color sorting

centered start

Started with a random pixel in center

corners start

Started with 1 pixel in each corner

Compositions

composition-1

Composition of 64 small images

composition-2

Composition of 4 images

composition-3

Composition of 4 images

Progess Gifs

minimum gif

Minimum selection

minimum gif final

Final image

average gif

Average selection

average gif final

Final image

hue gif

Sorted by hue

hue gif final

Final image

Installation

All the following steps require you to have Python installed. If you haven’t, download it here.

Clone the repository (git https://github.com/lorossi/every-color if you have git installed ) or download the release here.
Navigate the folder containing the file named every-color.py
Install all the needed dependencies using pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Launch the script with the command python3 every-color.py. Check below for the available options or launch writing python3 every-color.py -h
There you go! The image will be generated shortly after.

Script usage

Arguments

Command	Description	Defaults	Type
`-h --help`	show help	`none`	-	-
`-n --NUMBER`	number of images to generate	`1`	`int`
`-b --BITS`	image depth bits	`15`	`int`
`-p --STARTPOSITION`	location of the first pixel	`center`	`{center, corner, random}`
`-c --STARTCOLOR`	color of the first pixel	`random`	`{white, black, random}`
`-o --OUTPUT`	output folder	`output`	`str`
`-l --LOG`	log destination	`file`	`{file, console}`
`--PROGRESSPICS`	number of progress pics to be saved	`0`	`int`
`--SORTCOLORS`	sort colors before placing them	`random`	`{"hue", "saturation", "brightness", "default", "reverse", "random"}`
`--DISTSELECTION`	select how new colors are selected according to their distance	`min`	`{min, average}`
`--STARTPOINTS`	number of starting points	`1`	`int`
`--SEED`	seed for random function	`epoch time`	`str`

All arguments are optionals

Example usage

Basic usage (1 image, 15 bits for each color, 1 starting at the center with a random color, logging in console, no progress pics, random color sorting, pixels selected by their minimum value): python3 every-color-py
Generate 1 image with a color depth of 18 bits (512 by 512 pixels): python3 every-color.py -b 18
Generate 5 images and log progress to console: python3 every-color.py -n 5 -l console
Generate 2 images starting with from the central pixel and save them in generated/: python3 every-color.py -n 2 -p center -o generated
Generate 1 image starting with white and save 200 progress pics: python3 every-color.py -c white --progresspics 200
Generate 1 image sorting all colors by hue: python3 every-color.py --sortcolors hue
Generate 10 images with 5 random starting points and average distance selections: python3 every-color.py -n 5 --startpoints 5 --distselection average

Pause script

If, for any reason, you need to pause the script, create a file called PAUSE in the working folder. As long as the file is there, the script will be paused.

Additional infos

The script takes quite a while to generate big pictures (up to ~1.5 hours for 18 bits pictures with minimum selection, up to ~48 hours with average selection). There isn’t much room for optimizations and, according to my tests, parallelization won’t increase much the speed. The most computationally expensive process is searching for a better pixel.

Maybe Cython could help me with this task?

FFmpeg commands used:

To create MP4 video: ffmpeg -i frames/%03d.png -vf fps=25,scale=512:-1 out.mp4 -y
To create GIFS:ffmpeg -i frames/%03d.png -vf fps=20,scale=512:-1 out.gif -y

I like PEP8 but 79 characters is definitely not enough.

License

This project is distributed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.