Hue, Saturation, Value or HSV is a color model that describes colors (hue or
tint) in terms of their shade (saturation or amount of gray) and their brightness (value or
luminance). Also Known As: HSB ( hue, saturation, brightness )
The HSV color wheel may be depicted as a cone or cylinder. Instead of Value, the color model may use
Brightness, making it HSB (Photoshop uses HSB).
- Hue is expressed as a number from 0 to 360 degrees representing hues of red (starts at
0), yellow (starts at 60), green (starts at 120), cyan (starts at 180), blue (starts at 240),
and magenta (starts at 300).
- Saturation is the amount of gray (0% to 100%) in the color.
- Value (or Brightness) works in conjunction with saturation and describes the
brightness or intensity of the color from 0% to 100%.
For detailed descriptions of HSV, HSB, and the similar models:
- Tech-FAQ: Hue, Saturation and Value explains the color model.
"The HSV color space is
quite similar to the way in which humans perceive color."
- Tech-FAQ: Hue, Saturation, and Lightness explains this color model and how it compares to
HSV.
"Because the HSL model keeps the light and saturation aspects of the color model
unique from each other, it tends to be more useful for those wishing to take advantage of
these attributes in their work."
- Intel.com: Color Models describes and shows illustrations for RGB,
CMYK, and many other color models. Just over halfway down the page you'll find a discussion of
HLS (aka HSL) and HSV.
"The HLS (hue, lightness, saturation) and HSV (hue, saturation,
value) color models were developed to be more “intuitive” in manipulating with color and
were designed to approximate the way humans perceive and interpret color."
- Photozone.de: Color Models covers "HSL and HSV – the non-identical twins of color models" and
others with nice images and detailed explanations.
"As a method of describing colors, HSV
is particularly useful when creating what are called color progressions, meaning, in a
restricted sense palettes of related colors having the same or related hues, saturations or
values. In this case, knowing the actual figures for the red, green and blue primaries is
simply not necessary and HSV offers a more intuitive representation of the relationship
between colors. But the thing to be remembered is that HSV is just mapping a particular RGB
color space; it is a different coordinate system describing not more and not less than the
original RGB space."
- Rip's Applied Mathematics: Color: HSB (HSV, HSI) again looks at HSB as it relates to RGB with
formulas for expressing saturation and intensity.
"I personally understand HSB by its
relationship to RGB. Although hue, H, is the most complicated to describe mathematically, is
the one that is obvious to me. All we do is choose an angle; keep it constant, and we’re
working with tints, tones, and shades of a fixed color."