Openstreetmap-carto: New landuse=farmland rendering color too close of amenity=hospital

[Penegal]

[donaldrnoble]

As the same shade of yellow is used for schools and universities, it also affects them. And to me it seems more of an issue at lower zoom levels, even though the same colours are being used.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/55.9084/-3.3080

[polarbearing]

This could be solved if we eventually switch to boundary-rendering for amenities as in #1624.

[Vort]

Also farmland now is one of the brightest things, attracting attention like it is the most important feature on the map.

[mboeringa]

As the same shade of yellow is used for schools and universities, it also affects them. And to me it seems more of an issue at lower zoom levels, even though the same colours are being used.

screen shot 2015-12-04 at 10 53 56
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/55.9084/-3.3080

Personally, looking at these two examples on my color calibrated screen, I see no real problem. The distinction in colour is still clearly visible, and the amenities stick out by their prominent - impossible to miss - labelling and icons.

This could be solved if we eventually switch to boundary-rendering for amenities as in #1624.

+ 1, for quite a lot of amenities, if not all, this would be appropriate (exception of course for additionally tagged as building). In fact, I have done this for many of these features in my personal ArcGIS renderer.

[imagico]

On a general note: with changes like this which have a huge influence on the overall impression of the map - we had similar changes like those of wood and grass colors before - it is always good to take a few days to let it settle and try to look at it without bias. Being used to the old rendering we tend to have a more negative impression of changes because they are less intuitive to us at first.

That being said - yes, similarity to hospital/education is strong but there is not much room here. In the process (#1701, #1691) several options were considered and each of them has its problems. So those who are dissatisfied with the new color should think in alternatives and try out if these are really better overall - not only with respect to hospital/education but also to other similar colors.

Here is the current area color set so you can see the various problems:

My current opinion is i like the new color, especially since it encourages mapping other things than farmland. In the sample area shown above for example urban landuses are largely missing which is well visible as a problem. With the previous color urban areas not mapped with landuse were actually better visible than with which essentially discouraged proper mapping. The new color looks much more pleasant with fine grained farmland mapping and less so with coarse large farmland polygons which is just the right direction.

I would probably consider improving contrast with hospital/education to be more a matter of tuning that color than of modifying farmland.

[Vort]

All yellow-orange group can be balanced I think.

[kocio-pl]

Somebody has already proposed farmland color tuning with #faebd7 (Antique white). I can even make a mockups, but I just don't know how to calculate @farmland-line.

[Vort]

1/255 of intensity is not a big change.

[matthijsmelissen]

I just don't know how to calculate @farmland-line.

I don't think we have a systematic way to calculate that, I'd say just do what looks nice :)

Now the farmlands are brighter, I think grass should be brighter too, at least at low zoom: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/51.8470/4.2284

[imagico]

Now the farmlands are brighter, I think grass should be brighter too, at least at low zoom

I was thinking about swapping campsite and grass colors although the resulting difference between grassland and heath seems somewhat large.

In general it seems the fairly ugly appearance of the Netherlands at z10/11 is mostly due to the distorting color mixing and not due to the actual colors chosen.

[matthijsmelissen]

the distorting color mixing

What do you mean with that?

[imagico]

The old Mapnik/AGG issue with pixels partially covered by multiple polygons that also causes the gaps. Illustrated this in the context of gamma tuning in #1117.

AGG renders by drawing one polygon after the other and if multiple polygons intersect the same pixel it does not remember which part of the pixel was covered by the first polygon when drawing the second. Therefore the rendered color at low zooms where most pixels are mixed color from several polygons is quite far from the color that would correspond to the actual coverage fractions of the pixel.

[Tomasz-W]

@kocio-pl It's resolved by https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/3327, please close.

Edit: I didn't understand that PR properly.

[kocio-pl]

Are you sure? We just switched colors basically.

[kocio-pl]

See the example area with new colors - the problem is with both colors being similar and not one big area for school and the other one for the farmland, they're both mixed a bit:

[Tomasz-W]

I think that adding outlines for these campuses would fix it.

[kocio-pl]

What do you mean more precisely?

[Tomasz-W]

Showing amenity area borders (above the landcover) may clear the mixed view a little bit.

[Tomasz-W]

I find previous farmland colour to dark for using it for amenity fill. Please see examples how bad (too prominent) it will look in urban areas.

I did some Photoshop mock-ups with lighter (what makes it more neutral) #FFFAF2. Please spotlight matching of both colours with parking areas which are very frequent on amenity areas. I think that #FFFAF2 matches with them better.

University area mixed with farmland (farmland colour)

University area mixed with farmland (#FFFAF2)

City example (farmland colour)

City example (#FFFAF2)

Hospital area (farmland colour)

Hospital area (#FFFAF2)

What do you think about it?

[kocio-pl]

I don't feel convinced, however I still don't like this bright peach color and prefer to tune it eventually. #FFFAF2 is too close to the land color, there's no visible difference for me:

https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/5fd79b7bfad1d895c543e52838c65657fcd9fe1a/style.mss#L6

[Tomasz-W]

Just as my free tests for reference point and compare - the same amenity fill with #eeeeee (parking colour) as land colour.

[Tomasz-W]

Further amateur Photoshop tests, this time with a little bit yelowish #FFFCED (I started playing with former parking fill colour and makie it more pale)

I think it's not too close to farmland colour (see example no. 1) and not too close to land colour (see example no. 2). I see it also not too pale and not too bright. @kocio-pl What do you think?

[kocio-pl]

Looks nice for me - if it will work, I would be happy to use it instead of this peach bright orange...

[Tomasz-W]

@Adamant36 Can you make some more normal test renderings (including well-mapped-areas, isolated amenity areas, amenity areas surrounded by different landcover etc.) with #FFFCED?

[Adamant36]

@Tomasz-W, yeah sure. I was actually just thinking about doing that. It already looks like a really good color.

[Tomasz-W]

Btw. @Penegal or @kocio-pl you can swich tags in issue name as it's not up to date and we'are working on amenity=* fill colour, so it may confuse people ;)

[kocio-pl]

Why? It's still true. Or I miss something?

[Tomasz-W]

This name suggest a little bit that we are working on landuse=farmland colour, but we are working rather on amenity=hospital colour.

[kocio-pl]

I don't see the problem - they are still too close and we can fix it in multiple ways.

[Adamant36]

By "going with" I mean testing. Wait, never mind. I saw it up there in your message about it. #FFFCED. My bad.

[Adamant36]

[Tomasz-W]

[Adamant36]

[Adamant36]

[kocio-pl]

[Tomasz-W]

[Adamant36]

[matthijsmelissen]

[kocio-pl]

[dktue]

[Adamant36]