@thi.ng/color

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For the Clojure version, please visit: thi.ng/color-clj

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About

Array-based color types, CSS parsing, conversions, transformations, declarative theme generation, gradients, presets.

Supported color spaces / modes

Fast color model/space conversions (any direction) between (in alphabetical order). All types support an alpha channel, which defaults to 100% opaque (apart from the integer types).

ABGR (uint32, 0xaabbggrr, aka sRGB(A) as packed int)
ARGB (uint32, 0xaarrggbb, aka sRGB(A) as packed int)
CSS (string, hex3/4/6/8, named colors, system colors, rgba(), hsla(), lch(), lab(), etc.)
HCY (float4, similar to LCH)
HSI (float4)
HSL (float4)
HSV (float4)
Lab (float4, D50/D65 versions)
LCH (float4)
Oklab (float4)
Oklch (float4) (polar version of oklab)
RGB (float4, linear)
sRGB (float4, gamma corrected)
XYY (float4)
XYZ (float4, aka CIE 1931, D50/D65 versions)
YCC (float4, aka YCbCr)

From/To	CSS	HCY	HSI	HSL	HSV	Int	Lab	LCH	Oklab	Oklch	RGB	sRGB	XYY	XYZ	YCC
CSS	✅	🆎	🆎	✅	🆎	✅⁽¹⁾	✅⁽⁴⁾	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎
HCY	🆎	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎
HSI	🆎	🆎	✅	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎
HSL	✅	🆎	🆎	✅	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎
HSV	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅	✅	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎
Int	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅	✅	🆎	🆎
Lab	✅⁽⁵⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	✅⁽³⁾	✅	🆎	🆎	✅⁽³⁾	🆎	🆎	✅⁽³⁾	🆎
LCH	✅⁽⁵⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	✅	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎
Oklab	✅⁽⁵⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	✅	✅	✅	🆎	🆎	✅	🆎
Oklch	✅⁽⁵⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	✅	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎
RGB	🆎	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	✅	✅⁽³⁾	✅	✅	🆎	✅	✅	🆎	✅⁽³⁾	✅⁽²⁾
sRGB	✅	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	✅⁽²⁾	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎
XYY	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅	✅	🆎
XYZ	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	✅	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅	🆎	✅	✅⁽³⁾	🆎
YCC	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	❌	🆎	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅⁽²⁾	🆎	🆎	🆎	✅

✅ - direct conversion
🆎 - indirect conversion (mostly via RGB/sRGB)
(1) - only via parseHex()
(2) - no consideration for linear/gamma encoded RGB/sRGB (see Wikipedia)
(3) - including D50/D65 illuminant options
(4) - parsed as Lab w/ D50 illuminant as per CSS Color Module Level 4
(5) - only if targeting CSS Color Module Level 4 or newer

Color creation / conversion

Each color type provides a factory function to create & convert color instances from other models/spaces. These functions can take the following arguments:

CSS string
number (interpreted as packed ARGB int32)
array of color channel values (used as is)
scalars (one per channel, alpha optional, always defaults to 1.0)
color instance (might trigger conversion if needed)

Additionally, an optional target backing buffer, start index and stride can be given. See next section.

Some examples:

import { css, labD50, rgb, srgb } from "@thi.ng/color";

srgb("#ff0")
// $Color { offset: 0, stride: 1, buf: [ 1, 1, 0, 1 ] }

srgb(0x44ffff00)
// $Color { offset: 0, stride: 1, buf: [ 1, 1, 0, 0.26666666666666666 ] }

srgb(1,1,0)
// $Color { offset: 0, stride: 1, buf: [ 1, 1, 0, 1 ] }

srgb([0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4])
// $Color { offset: 0, stride: 1, buf: [ 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 ] }

// convert RGB CSS into Lab (D50)
labD50("#ff0")
// $Color {
//   offset: 0,
//   stride: 1,
//   buf: [ 0.9760712516622824, -0.1575287517691254, 0.9338847788323792, 1 ]
// }

// convert RGB CSS into Lab CSS (CSS Level 4 only)
css(labD50("#ff0"))
// 'lab(97.607% -15.753 93.388)'

// round trip:
// CSS -> sRGB -> lin RGB -> Lab -> lin RGB -> sRGB -> CSS
css(rgb(labD50("#ff0")))
// '#ffff00'

Additionally, colors can be created from black body temperatures (kelvinRgb()) or wavelengths (wavelengthXyz()).

Storage & memory mapping

All color types store their channel values in plain arrays, typed arrays of (mostly) normalized values ([0,1] interval). Where applicable, the hue too is stored in that range (similar to CSS turn units), NOT in degrees. Likewise, luminance is always stored in the [0,1] too, even for Lab, LCH where often the [0,100] range is used instead.

As a fairly unique feature, all color types can be used to provided views of a backing memory buffer (e.g. for WASM/WebGL/WebGPU interop, pixel buffers etc.), incl. support for arbitrary component strides.

The lightweight class wrappers act similarly to the Vec2/3/4 wrappers in @thi.ng/vectors, support striding (for mapped memory views), named channel accessor aliases (in addition to array indexing) and are fully compatible with all vector functions.

import { Hue, css, namedHueRgb, rgb, srgb } from "@thi.ng/color";

const memory = new Float32Array(16);

// create RGBA color views of buffer: num, start index, strides
// here the colors are tightly packed w/o gaps in between
// (by default entire buffer is mapped, last 4 args are optional)
const colors = rgb.mapBuffer(memory, 4, 0, 1, 4);

// manipulating the colors, will directly manipulate the underlying buffer
namedHueRgb(colors[0], Hue.ORANGE);
namedHueRgb(colors[1], Hue.CHARTREUSE);
namedHueRgb(colors[2], Hue.SPRING_GREEN);
namedHueRgb(colors[3], Hue.AZURE);

memory
// Float32Array(16) [ 1, 0.5, 0, 1, 0.5, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0.5, 1, 0, 0.5, 1, 1 ]

css(colors[0])
// '#ff8000'
css(colors[1])
// '#80ff00'
css(colors[2])
// '#00ff80'
css(colors[3])
// '#0080ff'

// use deref() to obtain a packed copy
colors[0].deref()
// [ 1, 0.5, 0, 1 ]

// here we create a *strided* WebGL attrib buffer for 3 points
// each point defines a: 3D position, UV coords and RGB(A) color
const attribs = new Float32Array([
  // pos     uv   color
  0,0,0,     0,0, 0.25,0.5,0,1,
  100,0,0,   1,0, 0.5,0.5,0.25,1,
  100,100,0, 1,1, 0,1,0.5,1,
]);

// create strided view of colors
// 3 items, start index 5, component stride 1, element stride 9
const colors2 = srgb.mapBuffer(attribs, 3, 5, 1, 9);

css(colors2[0])
// '#408000'
css(colors2[1])
// '#808040'
css(colors2[2])
// '#00ff80'

Color theme generation

The package provides several methods for declarative & probabilistic color theme generation. The latter relies on the concept of LCH color ranges, which can be sampled directly and/or mixed with a base color (of any type) to produce randomized variations. Furthermore, multiple such ranges can be combined into a weighted set to define probabilistic color themes.

import {
    COLOR_RANGES,
    colorFromRange,
    colorsFromRange,
    colorsFromTheme,
    hsv,
    lch,
} from "@thi.ng/color";

// single random color drawn from the "bright" color range preset
colorFromRange("bright");
// [ 0.7302125322518669, 0.8519945301256682, 0.8134374983367859, 1 ]

// single random color based on given raw HSV base color and preset
colorFromRange("warm", { base: hsv(0.33, 1, 1) });
// $Color {
//   offset: 0,
//   stride: 1,
//   buf: [ 0.774977122048776, 0.7432832945738063, 0.3186095419992927, 1 ]
// }

// infinite iterator of colors sampled from the preset
// (see table below)
const colors = colorsFromRange("bright");
colors.next();
// {
//   value: [ 0.006959075656347791, 0.8760165887192115, 0.912149937028727, 1 ],
//   done: false
// }

// 10 cool reds, w/ ±10% hue variance
[...colorsFromRange("cool", { num: 10, base: lch(1, 0.8, 0), variance: 0.1 })];

// generate colors based on given (weighted) textual description(s)
// here using named CSS colors, but could also be or typed colors or raw LCH tuples
[
    ...colorsFromTheme(
        [
            ["warm", "goldenrod"],
            ["cool", "springgreen", 0.1],
        ],
        { num: 100, variance: 0.05 }
    ),
];

// theme parts can also be given in the format used internally
// all keys are optional (range, base, weight),
// but at least `range` or `base` must be given...
[
    ...colorsFromTheme(
        [
            { range: "warm", base: "goldenrod" },
            { range: COLOR_RANGES.cool, base: hsv(0, 1, 0.5), weight: 0.1 },
        ],
        { num: 100, variance: 0.05 }
    ),
];

This table below shows three sets of sample swatches for each color range preset and the following color theme (raw samples and chunked & sorted):

1/3 goldenrod
1/3 turquoise
1/3 pink
1/6 black
1/6 gray
1/6 white

ID	100 colors drawn from color range preset
`bright`


`cool`


`dark`


`fresh`


`hard`


`intense`


`light`


`neutral`


`soft`


`warm`


`weak`

Full example:

import { colorsFromTheme, swatchesH, type ColorThemePartTuple } from "@thi.ng/color";
import { serialize } from "@thi.ng/hiccup";
import { svg } from "@thi.ng/hiccup-svg";
import { writeFileSync } from "fs";

// color theme definition using:
// color range preset names, CSS colors and weights
const theme: ColorThemePartTuple[] = [
    ["cool", "goldenrod"],
    ["hard", "hotpink", 0.1],
    ["fresh", "springgreen", 0.1],
];

// generate 200 LCH colors based on above description
const colors = [...colorsFromTheme(theme, { num: 200, variance: 0.05 })];

// create SVG doc of color swatches (hiccup format)
const doc = svg(
    { width: 1000, height: 50, __convert: true },
    swatchesH(colors, 5, 50)
);

// serialize to SVG file
writeFileSync("swatches-ex01.svg", serialize(doc));

Color sorting & distance

The package provides several functions to compute full or channel-wise distances between colors. These functions can also be used for sorting color arrays (see below).

distChannel - single channel distance only
distHsv / distHsvSat / distHsvLuma
distEucledian3 / distEucledian4
distRgbLuma / distSrgbLuma
distCIEDE2000
distCMC

The sort() function can be used to sort an array of colors using arbitrary sort criteria (basically any function which can transform a color into a number). The following comparators are bundled:

selectChannel(i) - sort by channel
proximity(target, distFn) - sort by distance to target color using given distance function
luminance / luminanceRgb / luminanceSrgb etc.

import {
    colorsFromTheme,
    distCIEDE2000,
    lch,
    proximity,
    sort,
    type ColorThemePartTuple,
} from "@thi.ng/color";

// (theme from above example)
const theme: ColorThemePartTuple[] = [
    ["cool", "goldenrod"],
    ["hard", "hotpink", 0.1],
    ["fresh", "springgreen", 0.1],
];

const colors = [...colorsFromTheme(theme, { num: 200, variance: 0.05 })];

sort(colors, proximity(lch("#fff"), distCIEDE2000()));

Sorting memory-mapped colors

Memory mapped colors (e.g. a mapped pixel buffer) can be sorted (in place) via sortMapped(). This function does NOT change the order of elements in the given colors array, BUT instead sorts the apparent order by swapping the contents of the backing memory.

See the pixel sorting example for a concrete use case...

import { css, luminanceSrgb, sortMapped, srgb } from "@thi.ng/color";

// memory buffer of 4 sRGB colors
const buf = new Float32Array([
    0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 1, 0, 0.25, 0, 1, 0, 0.75, 0, 1,
]);

// map buffer (creates 4 SRGB instances linked to the buffer)
const pix = srgb.mapBuffer(buf);

// display original order
console.log(pix.map((x) => css(x)));
// [ '#00ff00', '#008000', '#004000', '#00bf00' ]

// sort colors (buffer!) by luminance
sortMapped(pix, luminanceSrgb);

// new order
console.log(pix.map((x) => css(x)));
// [ '#004000', '#008000', '#00bf00', '#00ff00' ]

// buffer contents have been re-ordered
console.log(buf);
// Float32Array(16) [
//     0, 0.25, 0, 1,
//     0, 0.5, 0, 1,
//     0, 0.75, 0, 1,
//     0, 1, 0, 1
// ]

Gradients

Multi-stop gradients in any color space

The multiColorGradient() function can be used to generate gradients in any color space and gradient stops must be using all the same color type. Colors are pairwise interpolated, and by default, uses generic mix() function which delegates to type specific strategies. See GradientOpts for details.

import { lch, multiColorGradient, swatchesH } from "@thi.ng/color";
import { serialize } from "@thi.ng/hiccup";
import { svg } from "@thi.ng/hiccup-svg";
import { writeFileSync } from "fs";

const L = 0.8;
const C = 0.8;

const gradient = multiColorGradient({
    num: 100,
    // gradient stops
    stops: [
        [0, lch(L, C, 0)],
        [1 / 3, lch(L, C, 1 / 3)],
        [2 / 3, lch(L, C, 2 / 3)],
        [1, lch(L, 0, 1)],
    ],
    // optionally with easing function
    // easing: (t) => t * t,
});

writeFileSync(
    "lch-gradient.svg",
    serialize(
        svg(
            { width: 500, height: 50, __convert: true },
            swatchesH(gradient, 5, 50)
        )
    )
);

Cosine gradients

The following presets are bundled (in cosine-gradients.ts):

Preview	Gradient ID
	`blue-cyan`
	`blue-magenta-orange`
	`blue-white-red`
	`cyan-magenta`
	`green-blue-orange`
	`green-cyan`
	`green-magenta`
	`green-red`
	`heat1`
	`magenta-green`
	`orange-blue`
	`orange-magenta-blue`
	`purple-orange-cyan`
	`rainbow1`
	`rainbow2`
	`rainbow3`
	`rainbow4`
	`red-blue`
	`yellow-green-blue`
	`yellow-magenta-cyan`
	`yellow-purple-magenta`
	`yellow-red`

Two-color cosine gradients

The cosineCoeffs() function can be used to compute the cosine gradient coefficients between 2 start/end colors:

import { css, cosineCoeffs, cosineGradient } from "@thi.ng/color";

// compute gradient coeffs between red / green
console.log(
    cosineGradient(10, cosineCoeffs([1, 0, 1, 1], [0, 1, 0, 1])).map((x) => css(x))
);
// '#ff00ff'
// '#f708f7'
// '#e11ee1'
// '#bf40bf'
// '#966996'
// '#699669'
// '#40bf40'
// '#1ee11e'
// '#08f708'
// '#00ff00'

Multi-stop gradients

The multiCosineGradient() function returns an iterator of raw RGB colors based on given gradient stops. This iterator computes a cosine gradient between each color stop and yields a sequence of RGB values.

import { css, multiCosineGradient, srgb } from "@thi.ng/color";

const gradient = multiCosineGradient({
    num: 10,
    // gradient stops (normalized positions)
    stops: [
        [0.1, [1, 0, 0, 1]],
        [0.5, [0, 1, 0, 1]],
        [0.9, [0, 0, 1, 1]],
    ],
    // optional color transform/coercion
    tx: srgb
});

console.log(gradient);
// [
// 	[1, 0, 0, 1],
// 	[1, 0, 0, 1],
// 	[0.854, 0.146, 0, 1],
// 	[0.5, 0.5, 0, 1],
// 	[0.146, 0.854, 0, 1],
// 	[0, 1, 0, 1],
// 	[0, 0.854, 0.146, 1],
// 	[0, 0.5, 0.5, 1],
// 	[0, 0.146, 0.853, 1],
// 	[0, 0, 1, 1],
// 	[0, 0, 1, 1]
// ]

// convert to CSS
console.log(gradient.map((x) => css(x)));
// [
//   "#ff0000",
//   "#ff0000",
//   "#da2500",
//   "#807f00",
//   "#25da00",
//   "#00ff00",
//   "#00da25",
//   "#00807f",
//   "#0025da",
//   "#0000ff",
//   "#0000ff",
// ]

RGB color transformations

RGB color matrix transformations, including parametric preset transforms:

brightness
contrast
exposure
saturation (luminance aware)
hue rotation
color temperature (warm / cold)
sepia (w/ fade amount)
tint (green / magenta)
grayscale (luminance aware)
subtraction/inversion (also available as non-matrix op)
luminance to alpha

Transformation matrices can be combined using matrix multiplication / concatenation (see concat()) for more efficient application.

Status

STABLE - used in production

Search or submit any issues for this package

Support packages

@thi.ng/color-palettes - Collection of 200+ image based color themes & composable theme query filters

Related packages

@thi.ng/pixel - Typedarray integer & float pixel buffers w/ customizable formats, blitting, drawing, convolution
@thi.ng/vectors - Optimized 2d/3d/4d and arbitrary length vector operations, support for memory mapping/layouts

Installation

yarn add @thi.ng/color

ESM import:

import * as color from "@thi.ng/color";

Browser ESM import:

<script type="module" src="https://esm.run/@thi.ng/color"></script>

JSDelivr documentation

For Node.js REPL:

const color = await import("@thi.ng/color");

Package sizes (brotli'd, pre-treeshake): ESM: 15.70 KB

Dependencies

Usage examples

Several projects in this repo's /examples directory are using this package:

Description	Live demo	Source
Basic 2D boid simulation and spatial indexing neighbor lookups	Demo	Source
Probabilistic color theme generator	Demo	Source
Heatmap visualization of this mono-repo's commits		Source
Color palette generation via dominant color extraction from uploaded images	Demo	Source
Fiber-based cooperative multitasking basics	Demo	Source
Visualization of different grid iterator strategies	Demo	Source
Various hdom-canvas shape drawing examples & SVG conversion / export	Demo	Source
Basic hiccup-based canvas drawing	Demo	Source
k-means clustering visualization	Demo	Source
Matrix-based image color adjustments	Demo	Source
Randomized 4-point 2D color gradient image generator	Demo	Source
Image dithering and remapping using indexed palettes	Demo	Source
Interactive pixel sorting tool using thi.ng/color & thi.ng/pixel	Demo	Source
Animated, iterative polygon subdivisions & visualization	Demo	Source
Fork-join worker-based raymarch renderer (JS/CPU only)	Demo	Source
Fitting, transforming & plotting 10k data points per frame using SIMD	Demo	Source
Responsive & reactively computed stacked column layout	Demo	Source
Multi-layer vectorization & dithering of bitmap images	Demo	Source
Interactively drawing to & reading from a WebGL offscreen render texture	Demo	Source

API

Generated API docs

Authors

Karsten Schmidt

If this project contributes to an academic publication, please cite it as:

@misc{thing-color,
  title = "@thi.ng/color",
  author = "Karsten Schmidt",
  note = "https://thi.ng/color",
  year = 2016
}

@thi.ng/color

About

Supported color spaces / modes

Color creation / conversion

Storage & memory mapping

Color theme generation

Color sorting & distance

Sorting memory-mapped colors

Gradients

Multi-stop gradients in any color space

Cosine gradients

Two-color cosine gradients

Multi-stop gradients

RGB color transformations

Status

Support packages

Related packages

Installation

Dependencies

Usage examples

API

Authors

License

Readme

Keywords

Package Sidebar

Install

Repository

Homepage

Weekly Downloads

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@thi.ng/color

About

Supported color spaces / modes

Color creation / conversion

Storage & memory mapping

Color theme generation

Color sorting & distance

Sorting memory-mapped colors

Gradients

Multi-stop gradients in any color space

Cosine gradients

Two-color cosine gradients

Multi-stop gradients

RGB color transformations

Status

Support packages

Related packages

Installation

Dependencies

Usage examples

API

Authors

License

Readme

Keywords

Package Sidebar

Install

Repository

Homepage

DownloadsWeekly Downloads

Version

License

Unpacked Size

Total Files

Last publish

Collaborators

Weekly Downloads