HSVHSB

HSV, also known as HSB, refers to a color model that describes colors by three components: hue, saturation, and value (or brightness). The terms HSV and HSB describe the same underlying system; different software and literature use either value or brightness to name the third component. The model is widely used in computer graphics, digital imaging, and color selection tools due to its intuitive alignment with human judgments of color.

Hue identifies the type of color and is represented as a position on a circular color wheel, commonly given in degrees from 0 to 360. Saturation measures colorfulness relative to pure color, ranging from 0% (gray) to 100% (fully saturated). Value (or brightness) indicates lightness, from 0% (black) to 100% (full brightness). In many implementations these components are scaled to either 0–360 for hue and 0–1 or 0–100% for saturation and value.

HSV/HSB is typically defined in relation to the RGB color model. Conversion formulas exist to translate between HSV/HSB and RGB. A common approach is: if S is zero, the color is gray with R = G = B = V. Otherwise, compute an intermediate chroma C = V × S, a second component X = C × (1 − |(H/60) mod 2 − 1|), and a bias m = V − C. The RGB prime values are chosen from permutations of C, X, and 0 according to the hue sector, then each is shifted by m to yield final R, G, B in the 0–1 range (or scaled to 0–255).

Applications include color pickers, image processing, and design workflows. Limitations include non-perceptual uniformity, which can complicate tasks like color correction or perceptual-based editing.