TOtodd3834·Aug 29, 2023
This is the library the author references. I’ve used it myself and it works great
https://github.com/gka/chroma.js
In Accessible Palette: stop using HSL for color systems (2021)gka
chroma.js
JavaScript2012–2023
gka / chroma.js
chroma.js
JavaScript library for all kinds of color manipulations
5Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
10.6KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
JavaScript library for all kinds of color manipulations
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year6 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-05-27 03:30:05 UTC to 2023-08-29 15:37:59 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
6 sourcesYeah, I was looking at chroma.js a day or two back and thinking “you call it ‘t̶i̶n̶y̶ small-ish’ [0]!? This thing is 40KB, 14KB gzipped [1], that’s by no means small!”
I’d expect such a library to be way smaller (I dunno, but less than 10KB/4KB), and preferably support tree-shaking so that I can just pick out the hcl() function, for example, if that’s all I want.
[0]: https://github.com/gka/chroma.js
[1]: https://bundlephobia.com/result?p=chroma-js
In Show HN: I Made JavaScript Color Conversion Library for LCH/Lab/XYZ/RGB/Hex/HSLChroma.js – A JavaScript library for color conversions and color scales
66 points · Open discussionGood library to begin with, but could do better on the perceived brightness.
Since HSV is NOT perceived as evenly distributed to the human eye along the value(lightness) axis[1],
would recommend employing chroma.js[2] which uses the HCL and CIE color spaces, which in general yield more pleasing results for use in color scales.
[1] http://vis4.net/blog/posts/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/
[2] https://github.com/gka/chroma.js
i want hue might be a bit of overkill though: http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/iwanthue/index.php
In RandomColor – a color generator for JavaScriptGreat tool, it heavily uses chroma.js
http://vis4.net/blog/posts/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/
https://github.com/gka/chroma.js
The HCL color space is also available in this d3 module:
https://github.com/d3/d3-plugins/tree/master/cie
In "I Want Hue" – Colors for Data ScientistsI believe the 'Spectral' colormap (with a capital S) in matplotlib does exactly that.
Based on the names, it seems [1, 2] (along with all the other capitalized matplotlib colormaps) to be a ColorBrewer [3] colormap, which are all designed with these perceptual considerations in mind [4].
[1] https://github.com/gka/chroma.js/wiki/Predefined-Colors
[2] http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/pylab_examples/sh...
[3] http://colorbrewer2.com/
[4] http://vis4.net/blog/posts/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/
In Don't use Scatterplots