Convert light frequency to RGB?

Question

Does anyone know of any formula for converting a light frequency to an RGB value?

Answer 1

Although this is an old question and already gets a handful good answers, when I tried to implement such conversion functionality in my application I was not satisfied with the algorithms already listed here and did my own research, which gave me some good result. So I'm going to post a new answer.

After some researchs I came across this paper, Simple Analytic Approximations to the CIE XYZ Color Matching Functions, and tried to adopt the introduced multi-lobe piecewise Gaussian fit algorithm in my application. The paper only described the functions to convert a wavelength to the corresponding XYZ values, so I implemented a function to convert XYZ to RGB in the sRGB color space and combined them. The result is fantastic and worth sharing:

/**
 * Convert a wavelength in the visible light spectrum to a RGB color value that is suitable to be displayed on a
 * monitor
 *
 * @param wavelength wavelength in nm
 * @return RGB color encoded in int. each color is represented with 8 bits and has a layout of
 * 00000000RRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGBBBBBBBB where MSB is at the leftmost
 */
public static int wavelengthToRGB(double wavelength){
    double[] xyz = cie1931WavelengthToXYZFit(wavelength);
    double[] rgb = srgbXYZ2RGB(xyz);

    int c = 0;
    c |= (((int) (rgb[0] * 0xFF)) & 0xFF) << 16;
    c |= (((int) (rgb[1] * 0xFF)) & 0xFF) << 8;
    c |= (((int) (rgb[2] * 0xFF)) & 0xFF) << 0;

    return c;
}

/**
 * Convert XYZ to RGB in the sRGB color space
 * 

 * The conversion matrix and color component transfer function is taken from http://www.color.org/srgb.pdf, which
 * follows the International Electrotechnical Commission standard IEC 61966-2-1 "Multimedia systems and equipment -
 * Colour measurement and management - Part 2-1: Colour management - Default RGB colour space - sRGB"
 *
 * @param xyz XYZ values in a double array in the order of X, Y, Z. each value in the range of [0.0, 1.0]
 * @return RGB values in a double array, in the order of R, G, B. each value in the range of [0.0, 1.0]
 */
public static double[] srgbXYZ2RGB(double[] xyz) {
    double x = xyz[0];
    double y = xyz[1];
    double z = xyz[2];

    double rl =  3.2406255 * x + -1.537208  * y + -0.4986286 * z;
    double gl = -0.9689307 * x +  1.8757561 * y +  0.0415175 * z;
    double bl =  0.0557101 * x + -0.2040211 * y +  1.0569959 * z;

    return new double[] {
            srgbXYZ2RGBPostprocess(rl),
            srgbXYZ2RGBPostprocess(gl),
            srgbXYZ2RGBPostprocess(bl)
    };
}

/**
 * helper function for {@link #srgbXYZ2RGB(double[])}
 */
private static double srgbXYZ2RGBPostprocess(double c) {
    // clip if c is out of range
    c = c > 1 ? 1 : (c < 0 ? 0 : c);

    // apply the color component transfer function
    c = c <= 0.0031308 ? c * 12.92 : 1.055 * Math.pow(c, 1. / 2.4) - 0.055;

    return c;
}

/**
 * A multi-lobe, piecewise Gaussian fit of CIE 1931 XYZ Color Matching Functions by Wyman el al. from Nvidia. The
 * code here is adopted from the Listing 1 of the paper authored by Wyman et al.
 * 

 * Reference: Chris Wyman, Peter-Pike Sloan, and Peter Shirley, Simple Analytic Approximations to the CIE XYZ Color
 * Matching Functions, Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT), vol. 2, no. 2, 1-11, 2013.
 *
 * @param wavelength wavelength in nm
 * @return XYZ in a double array in the order of X, Y, Z. each value in the range of [0.0, 1.0]
 */
public static double[] cie1931WavelengthToXYZFit(double wavelength) {
    double wave = wavelength;

    double x;
    {
        double t1 = (wave - 442.0) * ((wave < 442.0) ? 0.0624 : 0.0374);
        double t2 = (wave - 599.8) * ((wave < 599.8) ? 0.0264 : 0.0323);
        double t3 = (wave - 501.1) * ((wave < 501.1) ? 0.0490 : 0.0382);

        x =   0.362 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t1 * t1)
            + 1.056 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t2 * t2)
            - 0.065 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t3 * t3);
    }

    double y;
    {
        double t1 = (wave - 568.8) * ((wave < 568.8) ? 0.0213 : 0.0247);
        double t2 = (wave - 530.9) * ((wave < 530.9) ? 0.0613 : 0.0322);

        y =   0.821 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t1 * t1)
            + 0.286 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t2 * t2);
    }

    double z;
    {
        double t1 = (wave - 437.0) * ((wave < 437.0) ? 0.0845 : 0.0278);
        double t2 = (wave - 459.0) * ((wave < 459.0) ? 0.0385 : 0.0725);

        z =   1.217 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t1 * t1)
            + 0.681 * Math.exp(-0.5 * t2 * t2);
    }

    return new double[] { x, y, z };
}

my code is written in Java 8, but it shouldn't be hard to port it to lower versions of Java and other languages.