Definition
Way of recording color by splitting it into 3 numerical values :
- Hue : basic color “of the color wheel”
- Ex : from red to blue
- Saturation : How dull is the color ?
- Ex : from grey to pure red
- Lightness or Value (opposites) : How light is the color ?
- Ex : from light blue to dark blue
These colors can be thought of as being in a cylindrical color space.
The difference between HSL and HSV is that the Lighness is inverted.
HSV color picker in MS Paint.
the white is always identical, so it’s the center of the cylinder. The vertical slider represents the height of the cylinder
On the height axis, HSL goes from pure black to pure white, whereas HSV only travels half the distance. It goes from pur black to 0.5, aka very colorful colors (saturated ?)
Since the top and bottom plane represent only 1 color, HSL and HSV can be represented as a cone of a double-cone.
Color pickers
In GIMP :
HSV with black as common color on the bottom
The slider controls the hue
HSV with
The slider controls the saturation
The slider controls the value
In HSV, the brightest value is 0.5 : it does not give pure white
This pink has 100% value. It’s as colorful as possible
Questions
What is the difference between HSL and HSV ? It seems to be more than a simple swap of light to dark
Saturation is HSV is not the same as saturation in HSL : why ?