How do I get a rainbow color gradient in C#?

Question

I'd like to have an enumeration of Colors based on the rainbow colors (red... yellow... green... blue...).

I see basically two ways to do that:

1. Create a lookup table containing some important reference colors and interpolate between these. I don't like this idea at all.

2. Apply some more or less fancy math. Probably less, but I don't quite see how it works. Any ideas?

(Oh, and while I did some SO research, I found no good results. If this question was already posted, please just point me to the location and I'll delete this.)

Edit: I'd prefer to have this independent of the used technology to display the gradient. For instance, something like GetRainbowColor (float f) with f ranging from 0 (red) to 1 (violet) would work great.

Answer 1

This is easier than you think.

First you need an hsv or hsl to rgb conversion function. Here is C# code to do that conversion.

Then you simply iterate over all of the possible values of the hue h while keeping the saturation s and luminosity l constant.

If you want 100 colors of the rainbow spaced out equally:

for(double i = 0; i < 1; i+=0.01)
{
    ColorRGB c = HSL2RGB(i, 0.5, 0.5);
    //do something with the color
}

You could also easily create your desired function GetRainbowColor this way by adding all of these colors to a List<ColorRGB> and returning the appropriate indexed color.

Answer 2

I like to use this:

public static Color Rainbow(float progress)
{
    float div = (Math.Abs(progress % 1) * 6);
    int ascending = (int) ((div % 1) * 255);
    int descending = 255 - ascending;

    switch ((int) div)
    {
        case 0:
            return Color.FromArgb(255, 255, ascending, 0);
        case 1:
            return Color.FromArgb(255, descending, 255, 0);
        case 2:
            return Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 255, ascending);
        case 3:
            return Color.FromArgb(255, 0, descending, 255);
        case 4:
            return Color.FromArgb(255, ascending, 0, 255);
        default: // case 5:
            return Color.FromArgb(255, 255, 0, descending);
    }
}

Answer 3

In winforms(or anything using GDI+) you could use System.Drawing.Drawing2D.LinearGradientBrush to do the interpolation for you.

WPF's System.Windows.Media.GradientBrush could work as well. It's abstract so you might end up with WPF's LinearGradientBrush. It's in a different namespace than the other.

EDIT: since the question was edited to indicate that you want to be tech independent I don't think this answer applies. I'm going to leave it here for now in case someone is looking for Gradients in C#, but if someone finds that objectionable I'll remove the answer.

I did a quick check to see if you could at least get at some of the functionality in a more independent way (such as getting an array of Point or something). Doesn't appear to be the case.

Answer 4

Here's one I like to use (the output is an HTML RGB color):

public static String Rainbow(Int32 numOfSteps, Int32 step)
        {
            var r = 0.0;
            var g = 0.0;
            var b = 0.0;
            var h = (Double)step / numOfSteps;
            var i = (Int32)(h * 6);
            var f = h * 6.0 - i;
            var q = 1 - f;

            switch (i % 6)
            {
                case 0:
                    r = 1;
                    g = f;
                    b = 0;
                    break;
                case 1:
                    r = q;
                    g = 1;
                    b = 0;
                    break;
                case 2:
                    r = 0;
                    g = 1;
                    b = f;
                    break;
                case 3:
                    r = 0;
                    g = q;
                    b = 1;
                    break;
                case 4:
                    r = f;
                    g = 0;
                    b = 1;
                    break;
                case 5:
                    r = 1;
                    g = 0;
                    b = q;
                    break;
            }
            return "#" + ((Int32)(r * 255)).ToString("X2") + ((Int32)(g * 255)).ToString("X2") + ((Int32)(b * 255)).ToString("X2");
        }

Answer 5

Start here: http://www.midnightkite.com/color.html

You can interpret this: http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/astro/color/spectra.html it's FORTRAN, but it's pretty obvious what it does.

Also, you can read more in-depth here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

Here's a version in Python: http://www.johnny-lin.com/py_code/wavelen2rgb.py

BTW, the first google hit for C# is this: http://miguelmoreno.net/sandbox/wavelengthtoRGB/default.aspx

Answer 6

http://colorfulconsole.com/ Allows pretty much what you're looking for, also can be installed as a NuGet package. It's not exactly a rainbow gradient. But it can write gradients to the console, also this confuses the IDE between the

Colorful.Console

and

System.Console

So make sure to define the right Console.

Answer 7

Just use the Rainbow.dll. This is probably not the best library, but for a smooth Rainbow effect on, I think, every WinForm Control you want, this is it.

Link: https://marschalldev.com/2018/08/02/csharp-rainbow-effect-net-dll/

How to use: Yourcontrol.background = Color.FromArgb(Class1.A, Class1.R, Class1.G);