Java Glossary : HSB

Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy Green ©1996-2004 Canadian Mind Products

Java definitions: 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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HSB

Hue Saturation Brightness. An alternative Java supports to RGB (Red Green Blue) for specifying colour. Java defines HSB as three floating point numbers between 0. and 1. Note that Java's definition does not match Paint Shop Pro's definition, even if you scale HSB to 0..255.

Hue

Roughly hue represents the position on the rainbow or colour wheel, only loosely related to the frequency or wavelength of the simulated colour. The colours coming from the screen are not actually varying wavelength, but combinations or red, green and lue that trick you eye into thinking they are seeing different frequencies of light. It works because of the biology of your eye's sensor cells.

Saturation

Saturation is a measure how white the colour is, how broad the spectrum. The more washed out a colour is with white, the less saturated it is.

Brightness

Subjectively brightness just measures how much light in coming from the screen when it displays that colour, the amplitude of the light waves. Java defines brightness as:

max(r, g, b) / 255

A more accurate measure for typical monitors would be:

0.2125*r/255 + 0.7154*g/255 + 0.0721*b/255

Some people define it as:

(r + g + b ) / (3 * 255)

Equivalence

You can generate an RGB-HSB equivalence table with the little application below.

view

You can play with Rich Franzen's colourwheel Applet to sharpen your HSB intuition.

Click any ball to view the corresponding colour palette.

Named Colours		Alphabetically		BHS: by Brightness, Hue, Saturation		HBS: by Hue, Brightness, Saturation		SBH: by Saturation, Brightness, Hue
		RGB: Numerically		BSH: by Brightness, Saturation, Hue		HSB: by Hue, Saturation, Brightness		SHB: by Saturation, Hue, Brightness
Numbered Colours		HTML 3.2		Websafe		Rainbow		X11
Selected Colours		Pale		Dark		Simple		Greys		Colour Schemes

CYMK ¤ RGB ¤ wavelength

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