Color Namer

Give me a color and I'll name it.

Color Namer is a node module that calculates color distance using the Delta-E color difference technique. Given a color in some format like RGB, HSL, or HSV, it uses the awesome chroma-js node module to convert the color to the Lab* color space, then calculates the color's Euclidean distance from a set of colors with known names.

Mike Bostock of D3 fame explains it well:

Lab and HCL color spaces are special in that the perceived difference between two colors is proportional to their Euclidean distance in color space. This special property, called perceptual uniformity, makes them ideal for accurate visual encoding of data. In contrast, the more familiar RGB and HSL color spaces distort data when used for visualization.

Installation

npm install color-namer --save

Usage

Easy peasy:

var namer = require('color-namer')
var names = namer("#FF0000")

The function returns an array of colors objects, sorted by proximity in the Lab* color space:

[
  { name: 'red',
    hex: '#FF0000',
    distance: 0
  },{
    name: 'orangered',
    hex: '#FF4500',
    distance: 13.170205025755513
  },{
    name: 'tomato',
    hex: '#FF6347',
    distance: 31.733444038510665
  },{
    name: 'crimson',
    hex: '#DC143C',
    distance: 35.38084849496472
  },{
    name: 'firebrick',
    hex: '#B22222',
    distance: 40.71076805218006
  },{
    name: 'coral',
    hex: '#FF7F50',
    distance: 42.340752375722616
  },{
    name: 'chocolate',
    hex: '#D2691E',
    distance: 44.378454180212145
  }
]

Sets

By default, names are chosen from a small set of basic colors.

// These are equivalent:
namer("#FF0000")
namer("#FF0000", 'basic')

To use the HTML color names:

namer("#FF0000", 'html')

Or good ol' ROYGBIV:

namer("#FF0000", 'roygbiv')

Or bring your own name data:

namer("#FF0000", [
  { name: 'black', hex: '#000' },
  { name: 'white', hex: '#FFF' }
])

Tests

npm install
npm test

License

MIT