Grandma2 Color Picker Plugin May 2026

Deep dive: grandMA2 Color Picker plugin

The Plugin Advantage

• One-Click Precision: See a teal color on the client's logo? Click it on the plugin wheel. It is instant.
• Touchscreen Friendly: Most plugins are designed with large, finger-friendly buttons and wheels, perfect for modern lighting desks with touch displays.
• High Dynamic Range (HDR): Many plugins offer "double-click" functionality to toggle between pastel and saturated color ranges.
• Workflow Speed: Programmers report cutting color mixing time by up to 70% using a dedicated plugin versus encoders.

Conclusion

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The Good:

• Speed: Select fixtures → Click on color wheel → Instant result. No scrolling through encoder pages or tapping Color → Preset → Pick.
• Discovery: Designers can sweep across the wheel to find unintended colors – e.g., a magenta that cuts through haze better than a programmed one.
• External monitor support: Run the plugin on a touchscreen laptop connected via Art-Net or Bomes to get a full-screen color wheel.

Desired features (functional)

1. Visual color map
   • sRGB / HSV gradient with optional gamut overlay per fixture type.
   • Click-to-sample and drag-to-sweep for color transitions.
2. Fixture-aware translation
   • Detect selected fixtures and choose best mixing model automatically.
   • Show a warning if selected fixtures cannot reproduce the chosen color.
3. Color temperature controls
   • Kelvin slider (e.g., 1800K–10000K) with smooth interpolation to fixture white parameters.
   • Neutral white-preserve toggle that retains saturation/hue while changing CT.
4. Output modes
   • Apply color as a Palette, directly to selected fixtures (live), or create a Cue/Cue part.
   • Ability to store as Color Palette with both RGB/HSV and fixture-native parameters.
5. Sampling and eyedropper
   • Sample colors from existing Palettes, Cues, or from an imported image.
6. Image/imported color extraction
   • Load an image and extract dominant colors (k-means or palette), with option to map to multiple fixtures for wash or pixel-mapped looks.
7. Crossfade and transition controls
   • Define how color changes are executed (fade times, snap, blend curves).
8. Preview / Simulation
   • Output a preview in a simple on-console visualization and support external visualization (if available) by exporting DMX or palette values.
9. Calibration / Gamut profiling
   • Allow manual per-fixture or per-fixture-type calibration to compensate for spectral differences or non-linearities.
10. Undo/redo, history and recent colors

• Quick access to recently used colors and an undo stack for edits.