I have two color values in HSI (Hue Saturation and Intensity) and I want a number which represents the visual difference between the two colors. Hue is a number between 0 and 360 inclusive. Saturation is 0 to 1 and Intensity is 0 to 1.
Lets consider for example Red and Blue at Saturation of 100% and Intensity of 100%.
At this website is a way to display the color by entering in the following text.
red is:
hsv 0, 100%, 100%
blue is:
hsv 240, 100%, 100%
Clearly these are two very different colors, and so a simple way I could try to calculate the difference between colors is to use the Hue component and calculate the absolute difference in hue which would be 120 (360-240) since 360 is also equal to 0 in hue.
The problem arises where the Saturation or Intensity is very dark or light, consider a very dark red and blue.
dark red is:
hsv 0, 100%, 20%
dark blue is:
hsv 240, 100% 20%
Obviously the visual difference between these two colors is less than the bright red and blue colors, as a human would state if asked to compare the differences. What I mean here is, ask a friend "Which pair of colors is most different?" they will likely say the top bright red blue.
I am trying to calculate the difference between two colors as a human would notice. If a human being looked at two colors a and b, then two colors c and d, he could notice which ones are the most different. Firstly if the colors are bright (but not too bright) then the difference is hue based. If the colors are too bright such as white or too dark such as black or too grey then the differences are smaller.
It should be possible to have a function diff where x=diff(a,b) and y=diff(c,d) yields x and y, and I can use x and y to compare the differences to find the most different color or least different color.
The WCAG2.0 and 1.0 guidelines both make reference to different equations on perception of color difference:
contrast ratio (http: //www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/Overview.html#contrast-ratiodef)
brigtness difference and 3. color difference (http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast).
I tried the Delta-e method(http: //colormine.org/delta-e-calculator/) but it is quasimetric so the difference measurement may change depending on the order you pass the two colors. If in your example you expect diff(a,b) to always equal diff(b,a) then this is not what you want(there may be different algorithms under this name that aren't quasimetric but I haven't looked into it past that site).
I think that the color difference metric is the closest to matching my expectations of color difference measurements. For your example it will yield that diff(a,b) > diff(c,d)
You can test it out for yourself using the tool at this website: http://www.dasplankton.de/ContrastA/
The general answer seems to be what David van Driessche said, to use Delta E. I found some Java code here: https://github.com/kennyliou/GAI
This is a answer to the question, may not be the best answer.
Related
I need to make a simple color picker. I have a slider that returns a floating point number between 0 and 1, which I'd like to convert into a color in the manner that you typically see in a color line or color spectrum (red on the left, violet on the right, green and yellow somewhere in the middle).
It seems like there must be some algorithm for converting the liner value into RGB values, but I can't find one. I've tried a few things on my own that did not really work.
I don't need anything super accurate or comprehensive, just something where the user can dial in an approximate color by sliding the slider left and right.
So I know basically nothing about colors apart from the very basics.
I have a color I'm trying to mimic.
I copied it, stuck it in paint, and used the color feature to get the RGB HSL numbers. Great!
RGB: 0; 49; 70
HSL: 132; 240; 33
The issue: When I try to manually input them into Excel, it "autocorrects" the RGB values after I enter in the HSL, and it "autocorrects" the HSL when I re-enter the RGB.
Why is this happening? Is this just an aspect to colors I know nothing about? Some limitation on Excel?
For reference, when I put in just the RGB, I'm much closer (but not quite there) on the color I'm looking for
HSL and RGB are two ways of "translating colors" into numbers.
HSL means Hue, Saturation, Lightness.
Hue is a degree on the color wheel from 0 to 360. 0 is red, 120 is green, 240 is blue.
Saturation is a percentage value; 0% means a shade of gray and 100% is the full color.
Lightness is also a percentage; 0% is black, 100% is white.
RGB means Red, Green, Blue, each of which is given a value between 0 and 255 in Excel.
Check this tool - https://www.w3schools.com/colors/colors_hsl.asp
If you put 0, 49, 70 for HSL you would see that it gets translated to 216, 141, 141 into RGB.
Excel is following the same logic, thus once you adjust the RGB the HSL gets automatically adjusted to represent the same color.
Excel colors are confusing because they don't follow the standard
Although the first reason you may have been confused was if you didn't know that RGB and HSL are two different ways of describing colors (and that every RGB color code has an equivalent HSL color code—see examples below), a second reason many people can get confused when selecting colors in Excel particularly is:
“Frustratingly, Excel does not handle HSL in the standard way. Instead, Excel measures all the numbers where 0 is the lowest and 255 is the biggest. But, it’s a quirk we can handle.” - https://exceloffthegrid.com/convert-color-codes/
“This approach assumes that each of your HSL values can be express in the range of 0 to 255. If, however, your HSL values are either an angle (for hue) or a percentage (for saturation and luminance), then you'll need to convert them manually before entering them in step 6. You can convert an angle value by multiplying the angle by 255 and then dividing by 360. Percentages can be converted by multiplying them by 2.55.” - https://excelribbon.tips.net/T013535_Converting_HSL_to_RGB.html
“To change the lightness (adding white) or darkness (adding black), drag your selection up and down the luminance scale on the right. Notice that the Lum value increases as the color gets lighter. Full luminance is 255 (white), and setting Lum to 0 results in black regardless of the hue and saturation settings.” - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choosing-colors-in-the-colors-dialog-box-c3d59ddf-65a7-4e62-aad7-f7b8d7684a2d
Examples of converting RGB color codes to HSL
rgb(0, 49, 70) = hsl(198, 100%, 14%)
These independent sites agree with Google that that RGB code converts to that HSL code:
https://colorpicker.me/#003146
https://hslpicker.com/#003146
So if someone told you that rgb(0, 49, 70) was equivalent to hsl(132, 240, 33), they were mistaken (even when using Excel's non-standard way of calculating HSL).
I would like to change smoothly the background color of a view over time.
Choosing 2 colors c1 and c2, it is easy in the rgb space to make a color function of the time c(t) = t.c1 + (1-t).c2, which will be a gradient between the two
However the rgb space is 3D and I am looking for a way to enumerate all colors smoothly.
I know there are billions of colors possible but coding RGB on 4x4x4 bits would be ok for my project.
My question is independent of the choice of the programming language
I have tried things like (pseudo code / Python)
for red in xrange(16):
for green in xrange(16):
for blue in xrange(16):
color = rgb(red, green, blue)
however this is not smooth at all, it is like a "step function" if you see what I mean (color will go from plain green to no green at all and a little red for instance)
Any idea how to do that ?
In that case I think you're better of with the HSV values of a color. You can use the same tactic and change only one of these HSV values at a time, to make the color shift more fluently.
Check this out (HSV)
EDIT:
After looking a bit further, I found this argument why NOT to use HSV.
This might be a good solution to your problem:
Solution
I have a list of several different "random" colors values (no less than 1 and no more than 8 colors). (Random means that there is no telling of their mutual "contrast".)
Colors are given as RGB values (possible simplification: as H values in HSL model, or in some other color system of choice — I have some degree of control of how original colors are generated).
I need to compute a single one color value that is the most "contrast" (i.e. visually distinguishable) from all colors from the list.
A practical criteria for the contrast, for the case with 8 colors:
If we draw 9 squares, filled with our colors as follows:
[1][2][3]
[4][X][5]
[6][7][8]
Color of square X must be clearly distinguishable from all adjacent colors.
Possible simplification: reduce maximum number of colors from 8 to 4 (squares 2, 4, 5, 7 in the example, ignore diagonals).
I think the best solution could be:
maximize hue difference with all the colors (simple linear optimization)
maximize lighting
maximize saturation
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorcontrasts.asp
Edit: with linear programming, you could give lower significance to the diagonal colors.
Edit2: What maximization means:
You want to maximize the hue contrast, that means the sum of all |Hi - result|, where Hi stands for Hue of color i, is to be maximized. You can even create conditions for minimum difference, e.g. |Hi - result| > Hmin. The actual calculation can be done by giving the equations to the linear optimization algorithm or you can try all hue values between 0.0 and 1.0 stepping by 0.05 and saving the best result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming.
how to get RGB values in percentage in photoshop.
and is cmyk percentage values are similar to RGB?
RGB and CMYK are different color modes.
RGB colors are screen colors. It is expressed in absolute values, usually in integer values from 0 to 255, representing the brightness on the screen. The exact range of values depends on the color depth of the image. The higher the value, the more light of that color is added, so the highest color is white.
CMYK colors are printing colors. They are used to represent the amount of ink used for a pixel. This is no absolute value, because it is merely a ratio between the color components. The higher the value, the darker it gets. 100% of each is (near) black, although real black is usually constructed by using 100% of K (key) and about 30% of each of the other components.
integer values from 0 to 255 are for 8 bit color, in the day of 16 or 32 bit color it would make sense to be able to view rgb as percentage values.
this is being added to Adobe lightroom currently does percentaes unless you're in the develop module, in soft proof mode