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What are OKLCH colors?

(jakub.kr)
855 points tontonius | 6 comments | 25 Aug 25 06:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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fidotron ◴[25 Aug 25 10:56 UTC] No.45012490[source]▶
> In the example above, you can see that the OKLCH colors maintain consistent blueness across all of the shades, while in the HSL example, the lighter shades drift to purple and the darker ones muddy out towards grayish.

There is a very clear shift towards green in the OKLCH lightness value change example, enormously more so than any purple vibe in the HSL example.

Clearly being able to select colours of the same perceptual intensity has value, but some of the claims here as to the benefits are exaggerated.

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rafram ◴[25 Aug 25 12:20 UTC] No.45013045[source]▶
There’s no green shift at all in that example on my display. Could your calibration be off?
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1. jibal ◴[25 Aug 25 14:25 UTC] No.45014214[source]▶
There certainly is ... run a color picker over it.
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2. rafram ◴[25 Aug 25 15:21 UTC] No.45014846[source]▶
I opened the macOS Digital Color Meter and set it to "native values" mode. The second-to-last OKLCH swatch has a green component of 202, and the last has a green component of 226. The corresponding values in the HSL swatches are 203 and 227.

Basically no difference at all.

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3. crazygringo ◴[25 Aug 25 18:06 UTC] No.45016865[source]▶
> The corresponding values in the HSL swatches are 203 and 227.

That is a gigantic difference. Those are totally different hues. Which are, of course, exactly the difference we're seeing.

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4. rafram ◴[25 Aug 25 18:45 UTC] No.45017435{3}[source]▶
I'm saying HSL has the exact same shift as OKLCH. And neither is visibly green to me.
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5. ◴[25 Aug 25 19:08 UTC] No.45017704{4}[source]▶
6. gowld ◴[25 Aug 25 19:42 UTC] No.45018095{4}[source]▶
It's visibly cyan, isn't it? It's maybe not an intuitive "green" hue (depending on your linguistic culture), but it's clearly different from all the other colors on that chart.