Random Discrete Colour Sampling

Abstract

Apparently-random distributions of colours in a discrete setting have been used by many artists and craftsmen in the past century. Manual colourisation is a tedious and difficult process. Automatic colourisation, on the other hand, tends not to not look 'random' to a human, as randomly-generated clusters and patterns stimulate human perception and break the appearance of randomness. We propose an algorithm that minimises these apparent patterns, making the distribution of colours look as if they have been distributed randomly by a human. We show that our approach is superior to current solutions, especially for small numbers of colours. Our algorithm is easily extendible to non-regular patterns in any coordinate system.