Penumbra, a perceptually optimized color palette based on natural light
For this palette, I used recent advances in color science, which made perceptual design more accessible, to choose a set of colors (mainly for syntax highlighting) that have uniform luminance for less visually uneven, fluidly readable code, but at the same time maximally distinguishable hue and chroma. The background colors are based on natural (sun-)light and shade for a more pleasing look than equally neutral greys. For much more detailed info, including the construction, check out the repository. There’s also already a (bare-bones) VSCode extension, linked in the repository, but it could…
In plain words
Penumbra is a color palette designed for code syntax highlighting and development environments. Built using modern color science, it uses uniform luminance across colors to reduce visual strain while maintaining high contrast and distinguishability. The background colors are based on natural sunlight and shadow tones rather than neutral greys. It includes a basic VSCode extension and is available as an open-source project.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
For this palette, I used recent advances in color science, which made perceptual design more accessible, to choose a set of colors (mainly for syntax highlighting) that have uniform luminance for less visually uneven, fluidly readable code, but at the same time maximally distinguishable hue and chroma. The background colors are based on natural (sun-)light and shade for a more pleasing look than equally neutral greys. For much more detailed info, including the construction, check out the repository. There’s also already a (bare-bones) VSCode extension, linked in the repository, but it could admittedly use more informed distribution of colors over tokens, language specific highlighting and perhaps more opinionated use in UI elements.
More dev tools this month
the category →
Open-source GTM skills for technical founders
Dev tools · 29d ago · gtmcofounder.com
OpenTrailPaper is open-source bike computer firmware for the LilyGO T5S3 4.7" E-Paper PRO. It supports offline maps, GPX routes, FIT recording and Bluetooth sensors.
Dev tools · 2d ago · opentrailpaper.com
Launched alongside, August 2022
the whole month →
DhiWise 2.0▲737Convert Figma designs into Flutter 3.0 & React code rapidly
Dev tools · 2022 · dhiwise.com
- PA
Hey HN, I've been working on https://pornpen.ai, a site for generating adult images. Please only visit the site if you are 18+ and willing to look at NSFW images. This site is an experiment using newer text-to-image models. I explicitly removed the ability to specify custom text to avoid harmful imagery from being generated. New tags will be added once the prompt-engineering algorithm is fine-tuned further. If the servers are overloaded, take a look at the feed and search pages to look through past results. For comments/suggestions/feedback please visit…
AI · 2022 · pornpen.ai