riceman0
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How to tell if a color is light or dark
Hey, what's the "right" way to tell if a color is on the dark side or on the light side. I'm asking becasue based on a System.Drawing.Color, I want to pick a text color, white or black, that contrasts with that background color. In MSPaint, there is something called "luminence" but I'm not sure how it's calculated from RGB...
Thanks.
strickdd
I'm not sure, but you might start by comparing the HEX values. Then see if the value of each pair of characters is > or <= 0F.
ASKER
What is the significance of the value 0F?
since the encoding of a color in Hex ranges from 000000 to FFFFFF, the middle value would be 0F0F0F i believe.
ASKER
Well, half of FF is 80. Also, FF0000 would be sort of a bright red, dark red is 800000, one of the pairs are >, two are <. What's the rule? And a System.Drawing.Color gives you R, G, and B properties of type Byte, no need for hex.
I'm sure I could trial-and-error some rules (e.g., any component >= 80 --> bright), but I was wondering what the real way was, some real accepted formula for brightness. For example from mspaint there appears to be a transformation between RGB and HSL (hue, saturation, and luminesence)? Anybody know it?
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ASKER
Looks good, thank you.