quick-color strives to be a clean open-source hacker-friendly color manipulator and converter. It seeks for maximum utility and functionality with minimum interface and overhead; a desk-calculator for colors.

Click Here for a Live version!

Syntax

We break it down as follows:

(LHS) 2 (RHS) (Arguments)

Where LHS and RHS is one of

col* (see note)
rgb
hex
hsv
hsl

and arguments are either one of

• a hex color in the form of #aabbcc or the short syntax of #abc
• a numbers between 0 and 255 (or 0 to 360 when appropriate in hsl/hsv space).
• a floating point numbers between 0 and 1.
• a percentage expressed like "90%"
• an equation with no spaces, such as "0.5/2".

Note: If the LHS is "col", such as "col2rgb", then the input can be an html color name ... the valid names will be shown in the drop-down helper after the command is entered. Try typing col2rgb p to see it in action.

Note 2: Every LHS has an "identity" function which can be used for equations. So for instance you can do hsl2hsl 42.903 0.744 0.488*0.75

Pipes

Like the unix shell, the output of the functions above can be taken as the input into a number of tools that will show harmonic color palettes. The reference list for this is available at http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-harmonies.htm

The following commands are currently supported:

• comp - complementary
• ana - analagous
• triad - triad
• split - split-complementary
• rect - tetradic
• square - square

The pipe maintains the RHS type information of the previous command. So that means that a command like

> col2hex pink | triad

Will convert pink to the HTML hex code equivalent and then do a stacked triad version of it.

Examples

Syntax

We're going to take an input expressed in a mixed form of percentages, floating point numbers, and a value that is [0..255].

Our test case will be the mid-point of each of these expressions.

> rgb2hex 50% 0.5 128 

The answer we are given here is:

#808080

Helpers

There's two 'replacement' charaters that immediately get replaced with a contextual answer from the last query.

? - If your first character is a ? then you get the RHS value of the last query ... that is to say the format of the output. For instance, if the last command was rgb2hex 50% 0.5 128 and you put in a ? then the ? will get replaced with hex2.

! - If you put an exclamation point after your function name, such as rgb2hsl ! then the ! gets replaced with the output of the last command.

These shortcuts help quickly chain a process such as the one below.

Complex

Let's say I have an HTML color, goldenrod, and I want to find a darker version of it. I can easily do this in HSL space.

> col2hsl goldenrod
42.903 0.744 0.488

Now I can click on the triplet number above and it will become part of the input. The type of the input is remembered, as you see, the input box now has the type of function, the output of the last one, and a replacement string, the LHS is selected (as the identity function).

Let's put in the text "rgb"

> hsl2rgb 42.903 0.744 0.488

And now we want the luminance (last number) multiplied by 0.75

> hsl2rgb 42.903 0.744 0.488*0.75 
163 124 24

As you can see from the little boxes, it looks like we are successful. But how do we use that number.

Hover over the little box and you'll see the hex code to use for html.

Click on it and you'll see the color appended to the input box and selected.

Now you can do a Ctrl+X (or equivalent cut) on your platform and get the color into the clipboard.