Re: [Gimp-gui] GIMP Theme UI now and future.

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 01/22/2016 09:30 AM, Jehan wrote:
> On 2016-01-22 13:25, Sven Claussner wrote:

> > - A pure white theme would reflect the proper appearance of the image
> > printed on white paper.

Monitor "pure white" has the absolute colorimetric LAB L value L=100 
(#FFFFFF). "Print paper white" has an absolute colorimetric white that's 
less than L=100. So it might help to have some reference points for 
print paper white.

For ten moderate to high quality "printer/paper combination" profiles 
downloaded from the internet, ArgyllCMS's xicclu showed "print paper 
white" values ranging from L=90 to L=98. Most of the values were around 
91 to 93. I'm a bit suspicious of the higher values (fluorescent 
whiteners?), but I'm not an expert on print paper.

If one goal for a Light theme is to emulate "print paper white", then 
expressed as sRGB and HTML colors, the basic color of a Light theme 
might be somewhere in the range of:

LAB L=90, sRGB R=G=B=226, HTML #e2e2e2
LAB L=91, sRGB R=G=B=229, HTML #e5e5e5
LAB L=93, sRGB R=G=B=235, HTML #ebebeb
LAB L=95, sRGB R=G=B=241, HTML #f1f1f1
LAB L=97, sRGB R=G=B=246, HTML #f6f6f6
LAB L=98, sRGB R=G=B=249, HTML #f9f9f9

In an actual paper print mounted on a wall, the print might not have any 
"paper white" highlights. If the mat around the image is white, I will 
guess that "mat white" is less bright than high quality printer paper 
white. So if the goal for a Light theme is to emulate what a paper print 
might look when displayed with a white mat, a Light theme might aim for 
L=90.

> So should the whitest theme be even whitest? ("pure white" #FFFFFF even?)

Even the lightest theme probably should be less than "monitor white", to 
allow the image highlights to be at least a little brighter than the 
theme colors and to avoid eyestrain from staring at monitor white for 
hours at a time. Maybe aim for around L=93-95 for the lightest theme?

Elle