How can I increase the brightness of a color without increasing perceived saturation?
February 18, 2011 9:18 AM   Subscribe

I'm working on a website that lets users set their own page colors. They only pick a handful of colors, then I'm offsetting the brightness (converting to hsv, add/subtract v) for things like shaded boxes, lines, faded text, etc. The problem is that in HSV, when you decrease brightness, the perceived saturation decreases (and when you increase brightness, the perceived saturation increases). How can I create these offset colors while making the saturation appear the same as the original color? Is there a formula for this? Should I be using a different color space?
posted by the jam to Science & Nature (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Maybe RGB to XYZ to L*ab, then change L and go back to RGB.

This page has a bunch of generic formulas that you can use a the basis for scripts for going from one space to another.

http://www.easyrgb.com/index.php?X=MATH
posted by JulianDay at 10:09 AM on February 18, 2011


Almost certainly Lab is what you want.
posted by polyglot at 10:14 PM on February 18, 2011


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