jQuery Color Picker Sliders with human color perception

A jQuery plugin that overhauls the classic color pickers and provides users with a whole new way of selecting desired color codes. Softpedia.com

Do you know the difference between the usual HSL and the human perceived (CIE Lch) sliders?

See the difference

Use the HSL hue slider, and the human perceived lightness will change a lot between the different hue angles (blue seems to be darker than yellow). Use the CIE hue slider, and the perceived lightness remains much more constant.

Update color from code: hsl(0,100%,50%) rgba(0,255,0,0.5) blue #ffff00 transparent

Color picker in a popup

Hint: you can type in any CSS color (even named ones, like yellow).

Let's see some different color pickers in action

HSL Color Picker

The following demo uses the HSL sliders with preview.

<span class="hsl-demo"></span>

$(".hsl-demo").ColorPickerSliders({
    flat: true,
    previewformat: 'hsl',
    order: {
        hsl: 1,
        preview: 2
    }
});

CIE Lch Color Picker with human perceived lightness

The following demo uses the CIE Lch sliders with human perceived lightness. It uses a different customswatches name and different default swatches, so the swatches are independent from the other color pickers on this page.

<span class="cielch-demo"></span>

$(".cielch-demo").ColorPickerSliders({
    flat: true,
    customswatches: "different-swatches-groupname",
    swatches: ["rgb(174, 156, 227)","rgb(29, 179, 229)","rgb(54, 185, 163)","rgb(144, 176, 105)","rgb(224, 148, 110)","rgb(233, 137, 168)"],
    order: {
        cie: 1,
        preview: 2
    }
});

RGB Color Picker

The following demo uses the RGB and opacity sliders. The swatches are disabled for this color picker.

<span class="rgb-demo"></span>

$(".rgb-demo").ColorPickerSliders({
    flat: true,
    swatches: false,
    order: {
        rgb: 1,
        opacity: 2
    },
    labels: {
        rgbred: 'Red',
        rgbgreen: 'Green',
        rgbblue: 'Blue'
    }
});

Popup on any element

The following example is linked to different elements and rendered in popups. Only the cutom swatches are disabled for this demo, so you can use the predefined swatches.

<input id="color" type="text" class="demo-popup" value="#56B29A" data-color-format="hex">
<button type="button" class="demo-popup">button</button>
<span class="demo-popup">span</span>
<a class="demo-popup">link</a>

$('.demo-popup').ColorPickerSliders({
    previewontriggerelement: true,
    flat: false,
    color: '#cf966f',
    customswatches: false,
    swatches: ['red', 'green', 'blue'],
    order: {
        rgb: 1,
        preview: 2
    }
});

Example for using the onchange() setting

this span is updated on change

<input type="text" class="onchange-example" data-color-format="hex" value="GreenYellow"> <span class="onchange-example" style="padding:3px;border:1px solid #ccc;">this span is updated on change</span>

<script>
    $("input.onchange-example").ColorPickerSliders({
        order: {
            hsl: 1
        },
        onchange: function(container, color) {
            var span = $("span.onchange-example");

            span.css("background-color", color.tiny.toRgbString());

            if (color.cielch.l < 60) {
                span.css("color", "white");
            }
            else {
                span.css("color", "black");
            }
        }
    });
</script>

A full-blown example showing all the sliders in action

The following demo uses all the sliders, and connects to a bunch of inputs to show the actual color values in different formats. The color format can be set on the inputs data-color-format property.

The color can be updated via any of the connected inputs. The plugin uses the excellent Tiny Color plugin, so it handles all valid CSS color formats (CSS color names as well!).

<input type="text" class="full-demo-input" data-color-format="hsl">
<input type="text" class="full-demo-input" data-color-format="hex">
<input type="text" class="full-demo full-demo-input" data-color-format="rgb">

$(".full-demo").ColorPickerSliders({
    flat: true,
    invalidcolorsopacity: 0,
    connectedinput: '.full-demo-input'
});

How perceived lightness work?

This color picker can work internally in the CIE Lab color space, represented with the CIE Lch color model. The benefit is the consistent lightness and chroma values between the different colors, so it can represent yellow and blue with the same human perceived lightness. This is not the case with the more known RGB or HSL color models, where yellow is much brighter than blue. Altough, this color picker supports them as well, so you can decide which way to go.

What is the drawback of using CIE Lch?

In CIE Lch model, there are colors that can not be converted to RGB values (for example there is no dark yellow color with high chroma value). When there is an Lch variation that can not be represented in the RGB color space, then the color picker searches for the highest possible chroma value for that particular color (for example the only valid chroma value for black or white colors is 0), and uses the lowered chroma value for conversion. This way the color's hue and the lightness will not distorted.

CIE Lch color picker with hidden invalid color ranges

The position markers on the sliders are always shows an exclamation mark when the actual Lch setting can not be converted to an RGB value, but there is more to it! You can make the invalid colors invisible or semi-transparent using the invalidcolorsopacity setting. This way it is easier to find different hues or lightness with the same chroma.
You can notice that if the chroma is set to too high, then the preview shows the actual color with the highest possible chroma value. See it in action:

<span class="cielch-demo2"></span>

$(".cielch-demo2").ColorPickerSliders({
    flat: true,
    invalidcolorsopacity: 0.2,
    order: {
        cie: 1,
        preview: 2
    }
});

Settings

Events

Example usage: $("#colorpicker").trigger("colorpickersliders.updateColor", "red"));

The following events can be triggered on the element which the color picker is initialized on.