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RGB is a color model[1], not a color space[2].

Note that the headline gets this wrong but the page linked to gets this right.

sRGB or Rec2020 or ACEScg etc. are color spaces with known primaries and a known whitepoint. This is not nit-picky. Almost everyone doing CGI for the first time w/o reading up on some theory beforehand gets this wrong (because of gamma and then premultiplication, usually in that order).

Then there are color models which are also color spaces. CIE XYZ is an example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_model

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space

It's always struck me as odd how there are so many off-white colors in HTML/CSS compared to the rest of the space.

Neat!

Feature request: I want the name of the color I'm hovering over to pop up next to the color. I don't want to have to look in the top left to see the name, especially with the board spinning. Also, I want the specific circle I'm hovering over to get a bit bigger so that I can see its exact color better and know that I've selected it.

I like the view into the black corner toward white. From that aspect, the black-white axis looks like an atmospheric effect, and the blacks appear as if they were opaque objects balls suspended in front of an illuminated fog.

Great project! It's visually dazzling and it really drives home the sheer size of the universe(s) of named colors.

I've long been interested in the names of colors and their associations. If I may plug my own site a bit, check out the "color thesaurus" feature on OneLook that organizes color names more linearly. Start with mauve, as an example: https://onelook.com/?w=mauve&colors=1 (It also lets you see the words evoked by the color and vice versa, which was a fun LLM-driven analysis.)

Neat, inspired me to make an immersive version (in WebXR) limited to named colors in HTML (140) so here is a 18s video https://video.benetou.fr/w/rugsEB2sSbqgixNm2QjumH

11 lines of JavaScript thanks to AFrame, threejs and some of my own tinkering :

  fetch('colors.json').then( res => res.json() ).then( colors => {
  colors.map( c => {
  let boxEl = document.createElement("a-box")
  boxEl.id = 'color_'+c.name
  let [r,g,b] = c.rgb.replace('RGB(','').replace(')','').split(',').map( n => Number(n)/100 )
  let pos = `${1-r} ${0.5+g} ${-0.5-b}`
  boxEl.setAttribute("position", pos)
  boxEl.initialPosition = pos
  boxEl.setAttribute("scale", ".1 .1 .1")
  boxEl.setAttribute("color", c.name)
  boxEl.setAttribute("target", "")
  boxEl.setAttribute("onpicked", "setFeedbackHUD('color'+selectedElements.at(-1).element.getAttribute('color'))" )
  boxEl.setAttribute("onreleased", "let el = selectedElements.at(-1).element; el.setAttribute('position',el.initialPosition)" )
  AFRAME.scenes[0].appendChild(boxEl)
  }) // end of fetch()

Is the initial setting (Color Name List) a list of ALL the colors in each "sub" category listed in the drop menu?

If so, would it be possible to put a "namespace" in front (like html.violet, or html::violet). That way you see which source it's from? That way you know where it's from (though I realize this may cause multiple "hits" on the same value/name) Or perhaps same names have different values.

Either way, pretty cool. I agree, it would be nice to have a button or mode to stop spinning without having to hack it manually.

I've recently used two decades of satellite data to compute average colors for land-cover types (like average forest color or average water color).

If you want to extend your color naming game by being able to say: This looks like Afghanistan-Water, or this looks like Ecuador-Forest

Page is here: https://landshade.com

What coordinate in the space is furthest from any named color? It looks like there are some relatively large voids in the blue/purple boundary area but it’s hard to say.

Why is #00FFFF called "Aqua" and not "Cyan"?

I guess there exist multiple names for the same colors, per https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colors.php, and for some reason "Aqua" takes precendence in this display.

Neat seeing the different shapes the RGB space gets compressed into if you select a different colourspace on the bottom right.

Bravo! I love color and color spaces.

I've been researching the way classic Macs quantize colors to limited palettes:

https://rezmason.net/retrospectrum/color-cube

This cube is the "inverse table" used to map colors to a palette. The animated regions are tints and shades of pure red, green, and blue. Ideally, this cube would be a voronoi diagram, but that would be prohibitively expensive for Macs of the late eighties. Instead, they mapped the palette colors to indices into the table, and expanded the regions assigned to those colors via a simultaneous flood fill, like if you clicked the Paint Bucket tool with multiple colors in multiple places at the same time. Except in 3D.

It would be great to see this for each culture around the world, identifying the named colours from their language / culture.

I saw a BBC? documentary about this years ago and it showed how some cultures had the ability to clearly identify different colours where I couldn't see any difference.

It turns out that knowing subtle differences in colours can have a strong impact on your daily life, so cultures pick unique parts of the colour spectrum to assign names to.

Are there really no named colors outside the sRGB gamut?

I use a similar app called Name That Color — https://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/#6195ED

I like sharing descriptive names with designers instead of naming everything "light blue" "dark blue" "not quite as light but still not dark blue" etc.

This new thing is tons of fun but seems a bit less practically useful.

I originally made this about 8 years ago just for myself: to see where the color name list I maintain had gaps: https://github.com/meodai/color-names

As I learned more about color models, I kept adding different ones over time. The perceptual models helped me understand the “missing” areas much better.

Later, after building an API around the list (https://github.com/meodai/color-name-api ), I started including other lists with permissive licenses too.

Appreciate all the thoughts and feedback here. I’ve also changed it so the cube stops spinning once you interact with it.

Very clearly shows much more sensitive our eyes are to luminance rather than hue or saturation, which was the main observation that allowed for the high compression rate of JPEG

Wish there was a way to make it stop spinning, it's practically impossible to figure out adjacent colors because everything keeps moving no matter what you do. Perhaps there is a way, but I didn't find it?

What is interesting to me is the blank spaces for various naming systems. Ornithologist's view (Ridgway) versus Japanese traditional. Reminds me of the discussion of the blue/green distinction by Kay etc al.

Oh yes, i also use the "Graphical 80's sky" when describing my car color. (#0000fc)

Xkcd Colour names based on a survey: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

Randomly mousing over it I noticed "Trunks hair" (#9b5fc0) and had to look it up to be sure I wasn't crazy...

Very nice! But there is no option to show color labels?

Now make it do a perceptually uniform color space.

Wait, does this not use the colornames.org dataset?

Can anyone explain the kind of dense cloud in the middle? Is that down to human perception? We don't give names to things we can't perceive uniquely?

Thief of Time by Terry Prachett has a great minor bit about characters who are naming themselves after colors running out of human made labels, as they have to get increasingly esoteric with the names. It's fun to see that visualized.

Is there a tool that can dither to named colors?

One thing I'd love to see is a comparison between named colors and colors in use. What areas are under represented by named colors?