Converting an RGBW color to a standard RGB/HSB representation

Question

I am building an interface for light management in a home automation system. I managed to control standard on/off and dimmable light for various providers with little proble

Answer 1

I have been reviewing the answer suggested by Roberto but the colors seemed dimmer and undersaturated in many cases. Taking the example of RGB = (255,255,2) leads to RGBW = (128,128,1,2).

Digging further, it seems that the paper by Chul Lee has an error in its equation for K. The equation, which comes from a paper by Lili Wang ("Trade-off between luminance and color in RGBW displays for mobile-phone usage") is actually:

K = (Wo + M)/M

Note that it is a capital M, not a lowercase m. Given this change, you also do not need Q since it scales properly by nature. Using the new K on the same RGB = (255,255,2) example leads to a much more reasonable RGBW = (255,255,0,2).

Putting it all together:

M = max(Ri,Gi,Bi)
m = min(Ri,Gi,Bi)

Wo = if (m/M < 0.5) use ( (m*M) / (M-m) ) else M 
K = (Wo + M) / M
Ro = floor[ ( K * Ri ) - Wo ]
Go = floor[ ( K * Gi ) - Wo ]
Bo = floor[ ( K * Bi ) - Wo ]