hsl16

Hsl16 refers to a fixed-point color encoding in which hue, saturation, and lightness are stored as 16-bit integers. In this scheme a color is represented as a triple (h, s, l), with each component taking values from 0 to 65535.

Hue is commonly interpreted to map linearly to the 0–360 degree circle via Hdeg = h × 360 / 65535. Saturation and lightness are mapped to the 0–100 percent range via S% = s × 100 / 65535 and L% = l × 100 / 65535.

Common storage forms include packing all three values into a 48-bit value or maintaining them as separate 16-bit fields in memory. This representation is independent of any RGB color space and is typically used for internal color processing or compact palettes where high precision is desired or where fixed-point arithmetic is preferred.

To render or interoperate with standard color spaces, hsl16 values are converted to conventional RGB or to standard HSL using the mapped real-valued ranges. The typical conversion flows use the standard HSL-to-RGB formulas after normalizing h, s, l to [0,1], with hue converted back from degrees if needed. Some implementations perform fixed-point arithmetic to avoid floating-point cost.

Although useful in certain workflows, hsl16 is not a standardized or widely adopted format. It is primarily found in research code, graphics tooling, or specialized pipelines that require fixed 16-bit precision and bitwise control over color components. It may be contrasted with 8-bit-per-channel HSL or with RGB-based representations such as sRGB or linear RGB.