Check if UIColor is dark or bright?

Question

I need to determine whether a selected UIColor (picked by the user) is dark or bright, so I can change the color of a line of text that sits on top of that color, for better

Answer 1

For me using only CGColorGetComponents didn't worked, I get 2 components for UIColors like white. So I have to check the color spaceModel first. This is what I came up with that ended up being the swift version of @mattsven's answer.

Color space taken from here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/16981916/4905076

extension UIColor {
    func isLight() -> Bool {
        if let colorSpace = self.cgColor.colorSpace {
            if colorSpace.model == .rgb {
                guard let components = cgColor.components, components.count > 2 else {return false}

                let brightness = ((components[0] * 299) + (components[1] * 587) + (components[2] * 114)) / 1000

                return (brightness > 0.5)
            }
            else {
                var white : CGFloat = 0.0

                self.getWhite(&white, alpha: nil)

                return white >= 0.5
            }
        }

        return false
    }

Answer 2

If you want to find the brightness of the color, here is some pseudo code:

public float GetBrightness(int red, int blue, int green)
{
    float num = red / 255f;
    float num2 = blue / 255f;
    float num3 = green / 255f;
    float num4 = num;
    float num5 = num;
    if (num2 > num4)
        num4 = num2;
    if (num3 > num4)
        num4 = num3;
    if (num2 < num5)
        num5 = num2;
    if (num3 < num5)
        num5 = num3;
    return ((num4 + num5) / 2f);
}

If it is > 0.5 it is bright, and otherwise dark.

Answer 3

My solution to this problem in a category (drawn from other answers here). Also works with grayscale colors, which at the time of writing none of the other answers do.

@interface UIColor (Ext)

    - (BOOL) colorIsLight;

@end

@implementation UIColor (Ext)

    - (BOOL) colorIsLight {
        CGFloat colorBrightness = 0;

        CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorGetColorSpace(self.CGColor);
        CGColorSpaceModel colorSpaceModel = CGColorSpaceGetModel(colorSpace);

        if(colorSpaceModel == kCGColorSpaceModelRGB){
            const CGFloat *componentColors = CGColorGetComponents(self.CGColor);

            colorBrightness = ((componentColors[0] * 299) + (componentColors[1] * 587) + (componentColors[2] * 114)) / 1000;
        } else {
            [self getWhite:&colorBrightness alpha:0];
        }

        return (colorBrightness >= .5f);
    }

@end

Answer 4

For everything that's not grayish, the RGB inverse of a color is usually highly contrasted with it. The demo just inverts the color and desaturates it (converts it to a gray).

But generating a nice soothing combination of colors is quite complicated. Look at :

http://particletree.com/notebook/calculating-color-contrast-for-legible-text/

Answer 5

Swift3

extension UIColor {
    var isLight: Bool {
        var white: CGFloat = 0
        getWhite(&white, alpha: nil)
        return white > 0.5
    }
}

// Usage
if color.isLight {
    label.textColor = UIColor.black
} else {
    label.textColor = UIColor.white
}

Answer 6

Swift 4 Version

extension UIColor {
    func isLight() -> Bool {
        guard let components = cgColor.components, components.count > 2 else {return false}
        let brightness = ((components[0] * 299) + (components[1] * 587) + (components[2] * 114)) / 1000
        return (brightness > 0.5)
    }
}