MCL: a Minimalistic Color Library

The MCL is a small collection of color related tools. It features:

lightweight color classes (RGB, HSV, XYZ...),
color spaces conversion algorithms,
color distance computations (delta e),
color interpolation functions,
command line utilities,
a (limited) C API...

Install

To build, MCL currently requires g++ 4.8, boost 1.54, and the NPL.

make
make install # PREFIX=/usr/local

Headers will be installed in $PREFIX/include/nauths/mcl/.
Binaries (clcc, clcd, clct) will be installed in $PREFIX/bin/.
The .a file (libmcl.a) will be installed in $PREFIX/lib/.

To use, simply include <nauths/mcl/mcl.hh>, add -std=c++11 to your compilation flags, and add -l mcl to your link flags.

Library

Here's a file named test.cc that uses and demonstrates some of the mentioned features.

#include <nauths/mcl/mcl.hh>
#include <iostream>

using namespace mcl;

int main(int argc, char const* const* argv)
{
  typedef Endomorphism<Color> ColorTransform; // Color -> Color

  ColorTransform t1 = opaque<Color>();        // sets alpha to maximum
  ColorTransform t2 = grey<Color>();          // converts to grayscale
  ColorTransform t3 = to<RGBub>();            // converts to unsigned byte RGB
  ColorTransform tr = (t3 , t2 , t1);         // (,) composes endomorphisms

  for (int i = 1; i < argc; ++i)
  {
    Color c = read<Color>(argv[i]);
    std::cout << tr(c) << std::endl;          // equivalent to t3(t2(t1(c)))
  }
}

Simply compile it with g++ -std=c++11 test.cc -lmcl -o test. This program expects colors as arguments, and outputs an opaque, greyscaled, RGBified version of them. For instance:

$ ./test red
RGBub(127,127,127)

$ ./test "HSV(30, 0.1, 0.6, 0.1)"
RGBub(146,146,146)

Tools

The MCL builds and installs three small binaries: clcc, clcd, and clct. Run any of each with "-h" to display a summary of options and usage.

CLCC: Command Line Color Convert

$ clcc -f "red" -t XYZ
XYZ(41.246,21.267,1.933)

CLCD: Command Line Color Distance

$ clcd --cie94 "RGB(1.0, 0.4, 1.0)" "RGB(1.0, 0.5, 1.0)"
4.79934

CLCT: Command Line Color Transform

$ echo red | clct grey | clct "to xyz"
XYZ(20.214,21.267,23.156)

Documentation

All the documentation can be found on the Wiki.

nicuveo/MCL