ColorsRich

ColorsRich is the first painting software with full multi-color support. It is a light-weight app with focus on improved user productivity and accessibility. It is developed specifically for artists who trust their creative-abilities and believe in creating art with their own hands.

Unlike primitive graphics and painting apps with mono color support, ColorsRich proudly sets a precedent by offering full multi-color support to its users. Yes, for every stroke you paint, you could select 3 arbitrary colors. More precisely, you have (3 x 4) 12 HSVA color properties at your disposal at any given time.

Full multi-color support sounds nice but it entails several non-trivial UI challenges. Presenting more choices is not enough. If the user feels lost and confused; if he feels intimidated; if he finds the UI too complex and extremely inaccessible; these choices, these shining new features would mean nothing to him. In fact, more choices, most probably, could become a source of pain for him. Yes, a beautiful dream could hopelessly morph into a living nightmare.

The true backbone of ColorsRich is its fluid, carefully-crafted, distraction-free UI system. It didn't happen overnight. It took nearly 2 years, several iterations, and countless trial-painting-sessions to overcome those hurdles. Although the beast has been tamed now; yet, there were several occasions when the battle was almost lost.

Thanks to this UI system, users can have a truly enjoyable working experience. They would feel substantial improvement in their level of productivity. They could, effortlessly, make the most of available features. They could keep their energies and attention squarely focused on:
  1. Coming up with new and exquisite color combinations.
  2. Painting vibrant, beautiful strokes.
  3. Creating art that is free of ugly, bland colors.

ColorsRich is in its 3rd year of development. It's created by Imran Ashraf, a solo-dev from Pakistan. It's authored in C++ using a small subset of Qt's Widgets framework. It's been developed, tested and used on a Core i3-(3rd gen) windows 8 pc, with a stock keyboard and mouse.

ColorsRich started as a host skeleton app to assess viability of a few Enhanced UI Productivity ideas. The plan was to create those Productivity features as some sort of a module/library and then offer it to existing mainstream painting and graphics softwares. Things, however, took a dramatic turn when a very interesting discovery was made during one of those late-night coding sessions. This discovery followed by a series of lucky breaks eventually provided the impetus to lay down the foundation for ColorsRich as a painting software.

ColorsRich is now at a stage where it could be groomed into a complete painting app. This, however, might not happen without some serious collaboration. Any investors/vcs (with administration, management, legal and finance expertise) interested in joining this project and willing to play a more active role, are welcome. Any graphics/painting/etc software company interested in the tech used in ColorsRich is encouraged to reach out without any hesitation.

Artists around the world deserve to have access to improved productivity tools and better choices.

Email: theotherimran@gmail.com

Twitter: ColorsRich