[R] measuring distances between colours?

[Ken Knoblauch]

John Fox <jfox <at> mcmaster.ca> writes:
> I'm interested in locating the named colour that's "closest" to an 
arbitrary RGB colour. The best that I've
> been able to come up is the following, which uses 
HSV colours for the comparison:
> 
> r2c <- function(){
>     hexnumerals <- 0:15
>     names(hexnumerals) <- c(0:9, LETTERS[1:6])
>     hex2decimal <- function(hexnums){
>         hexnums <- strsplit(hexnums, "")
>         decimals <- matrix(0, 3, length(hexnums))
>         decimals[1, ] <- sapply(hexnums, function(x)               
>                                  sum(hexnumerals[x[1:2]] * c(16, 1)))
>         decimals[2, ] <- sapply(hexnums, function(x) 
>                                  sum(hexnumerals[x[3:4]] * c(16, 1)))
>         decimals[3, ] <- sapply(hexnums, function(x) 
>                                  sum(hexnumerals[x[5:6]] * c(16, 1)))
>         decimals
>     }
>     colors <- colors()
>     hsv <- rgb2hsv(col2rgb(colors))
>     function(cols){
>         cols <- sub("^#", "", toupper(cols))
>         dec.cols <- rgb2hsv(hex2decimal(cols))
>         colors[apply(dec.cols, 2, function(dec.col) 
>             which.min(colSums((hsv - dec.col)^2)))]
>     }
> }
> 
> rgb2col <- r2c()
> 
> I've programmed this with a closure so that hsv gets 
computed only once.
> 
> 
> I vaguely recall a paper or discussion concerning colour representation in 
R but can't locate it.
> 

Dear John,

Are you thinking of 

Zeileis A, Hornik K, Murrell P (2009). “Escaping RGBland: 
Selecting Colors for Statistical Graphics.” Computational 
Statistics & Data Analysis, 53, 3259–3270. 
doi:10.1016/j. csda.2008.11.033.

or the vignette from the colorspace package that covers some
of the same territory.

How about if you compute color distances in Lab or Luv spaces?
These so-called uniform color spaces are based on human
discrimination data for small color distances so should be
better at finding the nearest color, I would think.  Untried
though.  Don't forget that these are based on a standard
color calibration, sRGB, I think in the case of R and your
display may or may not be close to that, so expect some
error from that as well.

best,

Ken



> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> John
> 
> ------------------------------------------------
> John Fox
> Sen. William McMaster Prof. of Social Statistics
> Department of Sociology
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/
> 
> 

-- 
Kenneth Knoblauch
Inserm U846
Stem-cell and Brain Research Institute
Department of Integrative Neurosciences
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