Atomic Color Scheme

Colors have been recalculated in 2023 using HSLuv!

Multiple colors for multiple applications

Atomic is a dark color scheme designed to use with terminals. This repository provides support for URxvt and XTerm; it also includes themes for some terminal applications (vim-airline, irssi, mutt, cmus, vifm) and Zsh. To use it in Vim/Neovim, check the repository vim-atomic.

Color palette

The color palette consists of sixteen precision colors selected procedurally (algorithms), distributed in six hues and four perceived lightness, according to the color space HSLuv («an alternative to HSL designed for perceptual uniformity based on human experiments».

Don't confuse the perceived brightness with the lightness of the HSL color model. Human vision doesn't detect brightness linearly with color: in a pixel (R'G'B') we see red color (#FF0000) darker than green color (#00FF00), and green color (#00FF00) brighter than red (#FF0000) and blue (#0000FF) colors.

So the perceived lightness has been balanced according to the ITU-R Recommendation BT.709:

Luma (Y') = 0.2126 R' + 0.7152 G' + 0.0722 B'

In a RGB color wheel, hues have been selected in order to be distinguishable for the human eye and keeping harmony: that means one color every 60°.

Space Mode: base colors use the blue color (hue 240°).

Onion Mode: base colors use the purple color (hue 300°).

This is an alternative mode with purple color.

Blood Mode: base colors use the red color (hue 0°).

This is an alternative mode with red color.

Night Mode: base colors use the orange color (hue 60°).

This is an alternative mode with orange color.

Grass Mode: base colors use the green color (hue 120°).

This is an alternative mode with green color.

Ocean Mode: base colors use the cyan color (hue 180°).

This is an alternative mode with cyan color.

Light Mode: base colors use the orange color (hue 60°).

Light mode is useful when the screen receives a high illumination or we have to code in a bright environment. Our eyes will not have to adapt the light sensibility every time we look at the screen.

Code editors and IDEs

• Terminal
  • URxvt (.Xresources)
  • XTerm (.Xresources)
• Vim and Neovim
  • Vim-airline (included in vim-airline)

Themes

• Irssi
• Mutt
• Cmus
• Vifm
• Zsh
• Rofi (.Xresources)

Installation

Atomic themes for cmus, irssi, mutt, vifm and zsh can be installed using the script install.sh. For example, to copy atomic.zsh-theme into its path use the following command:

./install.sh -m copy zsh

If you want to 'symlink' instead of 'copy', use the symlink option:

./install.sh -m symlink cmus irssi

Atomic colorscheme for Vim and Neovim can be installed directly from the following repository: gerardbm/vim-atomic.

Atomic theme for vim-airline is available from the official repository, just type: :AirlineTheme atomic.

Atomic colorscheme for Sublime Text is available from the official package manager.

For more specific information, read the following articles:

1. Installation for terminals (URxvt, XTerm).
2. Installation for code editors (Vim, Neovim, vim-airline).
3. Installation for command-line tools (cmus, irssi, mutt, vifm, zsh).

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Font family

Atomic is designed to look good with any kind of typography, as colors are distinguishable to any thickness.

Some themes (vim-airline, zsh) require the installation of Powerline fonts. URL: https://github.com/powerline/fonts

Testing Atomic

Old atomic color scheme

Check the old-atomic repository for old colors (selected using different algorithms).