How to generate n different colors for any natural number n? [duplicate]

Question

Say n = 100; How do I generate 100 visually distinct colors? Is this mathematically possible?

Answer 1

Yeah. Defining distinct is a product of deferring to a color space then when we say maximally distinct colors what we mean to say is colors which are as far from all the other colors as possible. But since the color space doesn't change the answer isn't going to change. And implementing something that better fits with human eyes and how human eyes see color like CIE-lab de2000 color distance makes redoing all the calculations hard, but makes a static list easy. Here's 128 entries.

private static final String[] indexcolors = new String[]{         "#000000", "#FFFF00", "#1CE6FF", "#FF34FF", "#FF4A46", "#008941", "#006FA6", "#A30059",         "#FFDBE5", "#7A4900", "#0000A6", "#63FFAC", "#B79762", "#004D43", "#8FB0FF", "#997D87",         "#5A0007", "#809693", "#FEFFE6", "#1B4400", "#4FC601", "#3B5DFF", "#4A3B53", "#FF2F80",         "#61615A", "#BA0900", "#6B7900", "#00C2A0", "#FFAA92", "#FF90C9", "#B903AA", "#D16100",         "#DDEFFF", "#000035", "#7B4F4B", "#A1C299", "#300018", "#0AA6D8", "#013349", "#00846F",         "#372101", "#FFB500", "#C2FFED", "#A079BF", "#CC0744", "#C0B9B2", "#C2FF99", "#001E09",         "#00489C", "#6F0062", "#0CBD66", "#EEC3FF", "#456D75", "#B77B68", "#7A87A1", "#788D66",         "#885578", "#FAD09F", "#FF8A9A", "#D157A0", "#BEC459", "#456648", "#0086ED", "#886F4C",                  "#34362D", "#B4A8BD", "#00A6AA", "#452C2C", "#636375", "#A3C8C9", "#FF913F", "#938A81",         "#575329", "#00FECF", "#B05B6F", "#8CD0FF", "#3B9700", "#04F757", "#C8A1A1", "#1E6E00",         "#7900D7", "#A77500", "#6367A9", "#A05837", "#6B002C", "#772600", "#D790FF", "#9B9700",         "#549E79", "#FFF69F", "#201625", "#72418F", "#BC23FF", "#99ADC0", "#3A2465", "#922329",         "#5B4534", "#FDE8DC", "#404E55", "#0089A3", "#CB7E98", "#A4E804", "#324E72", "#6A3A4C",         "#83AB58", "#001C1E", "#D1F7CE", "#004B28", "#C8D0F6", "#A3A489", "#806C66", "#222800",         "#BF5650", "#E83000", "#66796D", "#DA007C", "#FF1A59", "#8ADBB4", "#1E0200", "#5B4E51",         "#C895C5", "#320033", "#FF6832", "#66E1D3", "#CFCDAC", "#D0AC94", "#7ED379", "#012C58" }; 

Here's the first 256 as an image.

(left-to-right) (top-to-bottom). You might be able to get a few more distinct colors if you made sure each color was as equidistant as possible within the colorspace. That lookup table picks each additional color as maximally distinct from all previous colors rather than designating the N at the start and then mapping out the colorspace. So yeah, brute force and a high level color distance algorithm and you're set to make this same set of colors yourself. Over the course of a day or so.

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If you do set lists and make them equidistant you can get a distinct number between different colors for example, , Beats the default list at 5 colors which was at min_delta_max 53.2 with min_delta_max 61.5

Or the colors in the list, , #156FC3 #165859 #24C4FF #30A581 #957D5C #213E02 #DE9AF5 #68D840 #6E0062 #C25B77 which exceeds the first ten elements in the precomputed list.

If you wanted to try this instead: https://gist.github.com/tatarize/a483db49993e6e0e994ad82ba3e2a22e

Can be edited to take num_of_colors, and you can run it for a long time and get a set of colors which should have a lower overall min_delta_max (the biggest maximum minimum distances between any two colors in the list). You'd still want a precompiled list.