Formula to determine brightness of RGB color

Question

I'm looking for some kind of formula or algorithm to determine the brightness of a color given the RGB values. I know it can't be as simple as adding the RGB values together and having higher sums be brighter, but I'm kind of at a loss as to where to start.

Answer 1

The inverse-gamma formula by Jive Dadson needs to have the half-adjust removed when implemented in Javascript, i.e. the return from function gam_sRGB needs to be return int(v*255); not return int(v*255+.5); Half-adjust rounds up, and this can cause a value one too high on a R=G=B i.e. grey colour triad. Greyscale conversion on a R=G=B triad should produce a value equal to R; it's one proof that the formula is valid. See Nine Shades of Greyscale for the formula in action (without the half-adjust).

Answer 2

Here's a bit of C code that should properly calculate perceived luminance.

// reverses the rgb gamma
#define inverseGamma(t) (((t) <= 0.0404482362771076) ? ((t)/12.92) : pow(((t) + 0.055)/1.055, 2.4))

//CIE L*a*b* f function (used to convert XYZ to L*a*b*)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space
#define LABF(t) ((t >= 8.85645167903563082e-3) ? powf(t,0.333333333333333) : (841.0/108.0)*(t) + (4.0/29.0))


float
rgbToCIEL(PIXEL p)
{
   float y;
   float r=p.r/255.0;
   float g=p.g/255.0;
   float b=p.b/255.0;

   r=inverseGamma(r);
   g=inverseGamma(g);
   b=inverseGamma(b);

   //Observer = 2°, Illuminant = D65 
   y = 0.2125862307855955516*r + 0.7151703037034108499*g + 0.07220049864333622685*b;

   // At this point we've done RGBtoXYZ now do XYZ to Lab

   // y /= WHITEPOINT_Y; The white point for y in D65 is 1.0

    y = LABF(y);

   /* This is the "normal conversion which produces values scaled to 100
    Lab.L = 116.0*y - 16.0;
   */
   return(1.16*y - 0.16); // return values for 0.0 >=L <=1.0
}

Answer 3

For clarity, the formulas that use a square root need to be

sqrt(coefficient * (colour_value^2))

not

sqrt((coefficient * colour_value))^2

The proof of this lies in the conversion of a R=G=B triad to greyscale R. That will only be true if you square the colour value, not the colour value times coefficient. See Nine Shades of Greyscale

Answer 4

To add what all the others said:

All these equations work kinda well in practice, but if you need to be very precise you have to first convert the color to linear color space (apply inverse image-gamma), do the weight average of the primary colors and - if you want to display the color - take the luminance back into the monitor gamma.

The luminance difference between ingnoring gamma and doing proper gamma is up to 20% in the dark grays.

Answer 5

I think what you are looking for is the RGB -> Luma conversion formula.

Photometric/digital ITU BT.709:

Y = 0.2126 R + 0.7152 G + 0.0722 B

Digital ITU BT.601 (gives more weight to the R and B components):

Y = 0.299 R + 0.587 G + 0.114 B

If you are willing to trade accuracy for perfomance, there are two approximation formulas for this one:

Y = 0.33 R + 0.5 G + 0.16 B

Y = 0.375 R + 0.5 G + 0.125 B

These can be calculated quickly as

Y = (R+R+B+G+G+G)/6

Y = (R+R+R+B+G+G+G+G)>>3

Answer 6

Interestingly, this formulation for RGB=>HSV just uses v=MAX3(r,g,b). In other words, you can use the maximum of (r,g,b) as the V in HSV.

I checked and on page 575 of Hearn & Baker this is how they compute "Value" as well.