C#: Create a lighter/darker color based on a system color

Question

Duplicate

How do I adjust the brightness of a color?
How do I determine darker or lighter color variant of a given color?
Programmat

Answer 1

Taking the core method of @Pavel's answer I prepared the following two little extension methods for a more intuitive (at least for me) signature.

public static Color LightenBy(this Color color, int percent)
{
    return ChangeColorBrightness(color, percent/100.0);
}

public static Color DarkenBy(this Color color, int percent)
{
    return ChangeColorBrightness(color, -1 * percent / 100.0); 
}

Answer 2

I made a site that does this colorglower.com You can check it out to see a demo.

Here's the javascript code i used.

function lighten(color) {

// convert to decimal and change luminosity
var luminosity = 0.01
var computedColors = new Array();
var newColor = "#",
    c, i, n, black = 0,
    white = 255;
for (n = 0; n < 10; n++) {
    for (i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
        c = parseInt(color.substr(i * 2, 2), 16);
        c = Math.round(Math.min(Math.max(black, c + (luminosity * white)), white)).toString(16);
        newColor += ("00" + c).substr(c.length);
    }

    computedColors[n] = newColor;
    var arrayUnique = checkIfArrayIsUnique(computedColors);
    if (arrayUnique == false) {
        computedColors.pop();
        break;
    }

    computedColors[n] = newColor;
    newColor = "#";
    luminosity += calcPercentage();
}

return computedColors;

}

What this code does is it receives a hex color and then it outputs 10 lightest color versions of it and puts in in the array. You can change the luminosity to whatever you like to adjust the shade percentage. To darken the colors you just need to change:

luminosity -= calcPercentage();

Answer 3

I changed Pavel Vladov function to modify even RGB component, to get shades on any combination of R/G/B directions:

Public Function ChangeColorShades(color As Color, correctionFactor As Single, bR As Boolean, bG As Boolean, bB As Boolean) As Color


    Dim red As Single = CSng(color.R)
    Dim green As Single = CSng(color.G)
    Dim blue As Single = CSng(color.B)

    If (correctionFactor < 0) Then

        correctionFactor = 1 + correctionFactor
        If bR Then
            red *= correctionFactor
        End If
        If bG Then
            green *= correctionFactor
        End If
        If bB Then
            blue *= correctionFactor
        End If


    Else
        If bR Then
            red = (255 - red) * correctionFactor + red
        End If
        If bG Then
            green = (255 - green) * correctionFactor + green
        End If
        If bB Then
            blue = (255 - blue) * correctionFactor + blue
        End If

    End If

    Return color.FromArgb(color.A, CInt(red), CInt(green), CInt(blue))
End Function

Answer 4

You can also simply work on the RGB percentage to get it lighter or darker as you want, Here is an example for how to make a color darker x% than it is:

//_correctionfactory in percentage, e.g 50 = make it darker 50%
    private Color DarkerColor(Color color, float correctionfactory = 50f)
    {
        const float hundredpercent = 100f;                        
        return Color.FromArgb((int)(((float)color.R / hundredpercent) * correctionfactory),
            (int)(((float)color.G / hundredpercent) * correctionfactory), (int)(((float)color.B / hundredpercent) * correctionfactory));
    }

One more thing we can also reverse the process to be lighter instead, Only we getting the result of 255 - RGB and then multiply it by the percentage we want like the following example:

private Color LighterColor(Color color, float correctionfactory = 50f)
    {
        correctionfactory = correctionfactory / 100f;
        const float rgb255 = 255f;
        return Color.FromArgb((int)((float)color.R + ((rgb255 - (float)color.R) * correctionfactory)), (int)((float)color.G + ((rgb255 - (float)color.G) * correctionfactory)), (int)((float)color.B + ((rgb255 - (float)color.B) * correctionfactory))
            );
    }

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Take a look at the ControlPaint class:

MSDN: Members of ControlPaint