An Information-Theoretical Approach to the Information Capacity and Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation of Color Palettes

TL;DR

This paper introduces an information-theoretical framework to evaluate the capacity and cost-effectiveness of color palettes, balancing information conveyed with decoding effort, and applies it to various palettes.

Contribution

It proposes novel metrics and formulas for assessing palette efficiency from an information-theoretical standpoint, addressing a gap in existing evaluation methods.

Findings

Metrics computed for various palettes

Observed trade-offs between palette size and decoding cost

Framework applicable to diverse color palette designs

Abstract

Colors are used as effective tools of representing and transferring information. Number of colors in a palette is the direct arbiter of the information conveying capacity. Yet it should be well elaborated, since increasing the entropy by adding colors comes with its cost on decoding. Despite the possible effects upon diverse applications, a methodology for cost-effectiveness evaluation of palettes seems deficient. In this work, this need is being addressed from an information-theoretical perspective, via the articulated metrics and formulae. Besides, the proposed metrics are computed for some developed and known palettes, and observed results are evaluated.