HSV Color Space - Color Space Conversion

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The HSV color space

The HSV color space is very similar to the HIS color space. In HSV every color is represented by three components Hue ( H ), Saturation ( S ) and Value ( V ).

The following figure shows how this color model represents each color in a six sided pyramid form.

The Hue component describes the color itself in the form of an angle between [0,360] degrees. 0 degree mean red, 120 means green 240 means blue. 60 degrees is yellow, 300 degrees is magenta.

The Saturation component signals how much the color is polluted with white color. The range of the S component is [0,1].

Black has a V coordinate of 0. At this point the values of H and S are irrelevant. The point S=0, V=1 is white. Intermediate values of V for S=0 (on the center line) are the grays. When S=0 value of H is irrelevant (called by convention undefined). When S is not zero, H is relevant. For example pure red is at H=0, S=1, V=1.

The formula that converts from RGB to HSV or back is more complicated than with other color models, therefore we will not elaborate on the detailed specifics involved in this process.