/distinct-colors

Generate a palette of visually distinct colors. It's great for charts.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptISC LicenseISC

Distinct Colors

npm version license

This is a complete rewrite of (but is heavily inspired by) Mathieu Jacomy's Palette Generator

I have taken the ideas and the theories, and put them into a simple modular library. I have also optimized it for speed.

This library generates a palette of visually distinct colors, and returns an array of chroma-js objects.

distinct-colors is highly configurable:

  • Choose how many colors are in the palette
  • Restrict the hue to a specific range
  • Restrict the chroma (saturation) to a specific range
  • Restrict the lightness to a specific range
  • Configure general quality of the palette

To get an example of how to use this (and what it produces), check out I want hue.

Special thanks to Arthur Andrew Medical for sponsoring this project.

Arthur Andrew Medical manufactures products with ingredients that have extensive clinical research for safety and efficacy. We specialize in Enzymes, Probiotics and Antioxidants.

Installation

npm install distinct-colors

Getting Started

// ESM
import distinctColors from 'distinct-colors'

// CommonJS
var distinctColors = require('distinct-colors').default

var palette = distinctColors() // You may pass an optional config object

// Thats it!

API

distinctColors([options])

Generates a new palette. Returns an array of chroma-js objects.

Options

Name Type Valid Range Default Description
count integer 0-Infinity 5 The number of colors the palette should contain
hueMin integer 0-360 0 The minimum hue for colors in the palette.
hueMax integer 0-360 360 The maximum hue for colors in the palette.
chromaMin integer 0-100 0 The minimum chroma (color) for colors in the palette.
chromaMax integer 0-100 100 The maximum chroma (color) for colors in the palette.
lightMin integer 0-100 0 The minimum lightness for colors in the palette.
lightMax integer 0-100 100 The maximum lightness for colors in the palette.
quality integer 1-Infinity 50 The number of steps for k-means convergence. Will break early if the result has converged.
samples integer 1-Infinity 800 The number of color samples to choose from.