Generating color ranges in Python

Question

I want to generate a list of color specifications in the form of (r, g, b) tuples, that span the entire color spectrum with as many entries as I want. So for 5 entries I wou

Answer 1

I created the following function based on kquinn's answer.

import colorsys

def get_N_HexCol(N=5):

    HSV_tuples = [(x*1.0/N, 0.5, 0.5) for x in xrange(N)]
    hex_out = []
    for rgb in HSV_tuples:
        rgb = map(lambda x: int(x*255),colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(*rgb))
        hex_out.append("".join(map(lambda x: chr(x).encode('hex'),rgb)))
    return hex_out

Answer 2

Following the steps of kquinn's and jhrf :)

For Python 3 it can be done the following way:

def get_N_HexCol(N=5):
    HSV_tuples = [(x * 1.0 / N, 0.5, 0.5) for x in range(N)]
    hex_out = []
    for rgb in HSV_tuples:
        rgb = map(lambda x: int(x * 255), colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(*rgb))
        hex_out.append('#%02x%02x%02x' % tuple(rgb))
    return hex_out

Answer 3

Color palettes are interesting. Did you know that the same brightness of, say, green, is perceived more intensely than, say, red? Have a look at http://poynton.ca/PDFs/ColorFAQ.pdf. If you would like to use preconfigured palettes, have a look at seaborn's palettes:

import seaborn as sns
palette = sns.color_palette(None, 3)

Generates 3 colors from the current palette.

Answer 4

Use the HSV/HSB/HSL color space (three names for more or less the same thing). Generate N tuples equally spread in hue space, then just convert them to RGB.

Sample code:

import colorsys
N = 5
HSV_tuples = [(x*1.0/N, 0.5, 0.5) for x in range(N)]
RGB_tuples = map(lambda x: colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(*x), HSV_tuples)