3 ms·

I find the colour wheel (by extension HSL/HSV) somewhat intuitive, compared to RGB or CMYK mixing.

jacobolus 8y ago
HSL and HSV are an almost trivial transformation of RGB, which make no reference to human perception. They are a mediocre tool for implementing a color picker for an image editor, but at least there’s some logic to their use in that context, especially in the context of 1970s graphics workstations made by computer programmers with no color science background, where they come from. They should not be used for any other purpose. Back in ~2010 I wrote the Wikipedia page about HSL/HSV and made a diagram explaining how the transformation works, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hsl-and-hsv.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hsl-and-hsv.svg
- slavik81 8y ago
  Thank you very much for that diagram. I've referred confused people to it on a number of occasions—including myself at least once.
- some1else 8y ago
  Very nice diagram, and thank you for writing that page! I've visited a few times before. I agree that processing photo-material in Lab has definite advantages, it's perfect for perceptually mutating colours. It's definitely a superior colour model. I get stuck trying to use it to build the initial palette though, and I'd have similar trouble sticking to RGB or CMYK. I'd say that despite perceptual differences caused by HSL/HSV transformations, I'm able to intuit a colour based on it's Hue and Saturation (accounting for the mistakes), by referring to the colour wheel in my mind. Whereas in Lab I can only anticipate the effect of Lightness, the effects of a and b components are too non-linear for me to grasp. Luckily there is support for Lab in chroma.js, which is very useful for making perceptually sound mutations when generating UI palettes. I used it once for ~equidistant traversal: http://some1else.github.io/life/ http://some1else.github.io/life/ Edit: I'd like clarify that traversing all these colour spaces in decent UIs is quite manageable. I was referring to how fast I can guesstimate a colour from reading the actual values. For example, let's take the YC colour and write it down. Compared to the rest, HSB immediately screams "bright orange" at me: Hex: #fc6621 RGB: 252, 102, 33 CMYK: 0%, 75%, 96%, 0% Lab: 63, 56, 65 HSB: 19°, 87%, 99%
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    You would be able to guess a lot better given Munsell coordinates, CIECAM02 JCh (or even lightness, chroma, and hue composition), or in a pinch CIELAB LCh. I find NCS coordinates less useful, but some people like those too. In CIECAM02 assuming a fairly typical context: J: 55.5 ... C: 78.7 ... h: 43.3° ... hue composition 43Y 57R From which it is immediately obvious we are talking about a slightly lighter than mid-gray, very intense, slightly reddish orange. None of the versions you listed are close to intuitive for a human reader who hasn’t spent a lot of time memorizing the mapping between representation and color.

HSL and HSV are an almost trivial transformation of RGB, which make no reference to human perception. They are a mediocre tool for implementing a color picker for an image editor, but at least there’s some logic to their use in that context, especially in the context of 1970s graphics workstations made by computer programmers with no color science background, where they come from. They should not be used for any other purpose. Back in ~2010 I wrote the Wikipedia page about HSL/HSV and made a diagram explaining how the transformation works, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hsl-and-hsv.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hsl-and-hsv.svg

slavik81 8y ago
Thank you very much for that diagram. I've referred confused people to it on a number of occasions—including myself at least once.
some1else 8y ago
Very nice diagram, and thank you for writing that page! I've visited a few times before. I agree that processing photo-material in Lab has definite advantages, it's perfect for perceptually mutating colours. It's definitely a superior colour model. I get stuck trying to use it to build the initial palette though, and I'd have similar trouble sticking to RGB or CMYK. I'd say that despite perceptual differences caused by HSL/HSV transformations, I'm able to intuit a colour based on it's Hue and Saturation (accounting for the mistakes), by referring to the colour wheel in my mind. Whereas in Lab I can only anticipate the effect of Lightness, the effects of a and b components are too non-linear for me to grasp. Luckily there is support for Lab in chroma.js, which is very useful for making perceptually sound mutations when generating UI palettes. I used it once for ~equidistant traversal: http://some1else.github.io/life/ http://some1else.github.io/life/ Edit: I'd like clarify that traversing all these colour spaces in decent UIs is quite manageable. I was referring to how fast I can guesstimate a colour from reading the actual values. For example, let's take the YC colour and write it down. Compared to the rest, HSB immediately screams "bright orange" at me: Hex: #fc6621 RGB: 252, 102, 33 CMYK: 0%, 75%, 96%, 0% Lab: 63, 56, 65 HSB: 19°, 87%, 99%
- jacobolus 8y ago
  You would be able to guess a lot better given Munsell coordinates, CIECAM02 JCh (or even lightness, chroma, and hue composition), or in a pinch CIELAB LCh. I find NCS coordinates less useful, but some people like those too. In CIECAM02 assuming a fairly typical context: J: 55.5 ... C: 78.7 ... h: 43.3° ... hue composition 43Y 57R From which it is immediately obvious we are talking about a slightly lighter than mid-gray, very intense, slightly reddish orange. None of the versions you listed are close to intuitive for a human reader who hasn’t spent a lot of time memorizing the mapping between representation and color.