How to check if hex color is "too black"?

Solution 1:

You have to extract the three RGB components individually, and then use a standard formula to convert the resulting RGB values into their perceived brightness.

Assuming a six character colour:

var c = c.substring(1);      // strip #
var rgb = parseInt(c, 16);   // convert rrggbb to decimal
var r = (rgb >> 16) & 0xff;  // extract red
var g = (rgb >>  8) & 0xff;  // extract green
var b = (rgb >>  0) & 0xff;  // extract blue

var luma = 0.2126 * r + 0.7152 * g + 0.0722 * b; // per ITU-R BT.709

if (luma < 40) {
    // pick a different colour
}

EDIT

Since May 2014 tinycolor now has a getBrightness() function, albeit using the CCIR601 weighting factors instead of the ITU-R ones above.

EDIT

The resulting luma value range is 0..255, where 0 is the darkest and 255 is the lightest. Values greater than 128 are considered light by tinycolor. (shamelessly copied from the comments by @pau.moreno and @Alnitak)

Solution 2:

I found this WooCommerce Wordpress PHP function (wc_hex_is_light) and I converted to JavaScript. Works fine!

function wc_hex_is_light(color) {
    const hex = color.replace('#', '');
    const c_r = parseInt(hex.substr(0, 2), 16);
    const c_g = parseInt(hex.substr(2, 2), 16);
    const c_b = parseInt(hex.substr(4, 2), 16);
    const brightness = ((c_r * 299) + (c_g * 587) + (c_b * 114)) / 1000;
    return brightness > 155;
}

Solution 3:

The TinyColor library (you've already mentioned it) provides several functions for inspecting and manipulating colors, among them:

• getBrightness

  Returns the perceived brightness of a color, from 0-255, as defined by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (Version 1.0).

  tinycolor("#fff").getBrightness(); // 255
  

• isLight

  Return a boolean indicating whether the color's perceived brightness is light.

  tinycolor("#fff").isLight(); // true
  tinycolor("#000").isLight(); // false
  

• isDark

  Return a boolean indicating whether the color's perceived brightness is dark.

  tinycolor("#fff").isDark(); // false
  tinycolor("#000").isDark(); // true
  

• getLuminance

  Returns the perceived luminance of a color, from 0-1 as defined by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (Version 2.0).

  tinycolor("#fff").getLuminance(); // 1
  

Solution 4:

You can compute the luminance:

Luminance is thus an indicator of how bright the surface will appear.

So it's great to choose if the text should be white or black.

var getRGB = function(b){
    var a;
    if(b&&b.constructor==Array&&b.length==3)return b;
    if(a=/rgb\(\s*([0-9]{1,3})\s*,\s*([0-9]{1,3})\s*,\s*([0-9]{1,3})\s*\)/.exec(b))return[parseInt(a[1]),parseInt(a[2]),parseInt(a[3])];
    if(a=/rgb\(\s*([0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)\%\s*,\s*([0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)\%\s*,\s*([0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)\%\s*\)/.exec(b))return[parseFloat(a[1])*2.55,parseFloat(a[2])*2.55,parseFloat(a[3])*2.55];
    if(a=/#([a-fA-F0-9]{2})([a-fA-F0-9]{2})([a-fA-F0-9]{2})/.exec(b))return[parseInt(a[1],16),parseInt(a[2],16),parseInt(a[3],
16)];
    if(a=/#([a-fA-F0-9])([a-fA-F0-9])([a-fA-F0-9])/.exec(b))return[parseInt(a[1]+a[1],16),parseInt(a[2]+a[2],16),parseInt(a[3]+a[3],16)];
    return (typeof (colors) != "undefined")?colors[jQuery.trim(b).toLowerCase()]:null
};

var luminance_get = function(color) {
    var rgb = getRGB(color);
    if (!rgb) return null;
        return 0.2126 * rgb[0] + 0.7152 * rgb[1] + 0.0722 * rgb[2];
}

The method above allows you to pass the color in different formats, but the algorithm is basically just in luminance_get.

When I used it, I was setting the color to black if the luminance was greater than 180, white otherwise.