Generating color ranges in Python

Question

I want to generate a list of color specifications in the form of (r, g, b) tuples, that span the entire color spectrum with as many entries as I want. So for 5 entries I would want something like:

• (0, 0, 1)
• (0, 1, 0)
• (1, 0, 0)
• (1, 0.5, 1)
• (0, 0, 0.5)

Of course, if there are more entries than combination of 0 and 1 it should turn to use fractions, etc. What would be the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Use the HSV/HSB/HSL color space (three names for more or less the same thing). Generate N tuples equally spread in hue space, then just convert them to RGB.

Sample code:

import colorsys N = 5 HSV_tuples = [(x*1.0/N, 0.5, 0.5) for x in range(N)] RGB_tuples = map(lambda x: colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(*x), HSV_tuples) 

Answer 2

Color palettes are interesting. Did you know that the same brightness of, say, green, is perceived more intensely than, say, red? Have a look at http://poynton.ca/PDFs/ColorFAQ.pdf. If you would like to use preconfigured palettes, have a look at seaborn's palettes:

import seaborn as sns
palette = sns.color_palette(None, 3)

Generates 3 colors from the current palette.