mcolor - Maxine's Mean Color Library

mcolor is a C++20 library designed to provide an efficient suite for color management. Ideal for use in games, console applications, UI, and so forth.

Color as a Class

At its heart, mcolor defines fundamental color structures for clear and concise representation:

• Color3: Represents an RGB color with 8-bit unsigned integer components (uint8_t r, g, b).
• Color4: Extends Color3 to include an alpha channel (uint8_t r, g, b, a).

These core types are complemented by a full range of conversion structs, enabling seamless transitions between various color models:

• HSV, HSVA: Hue, Saturation, Value (with Alpha)
• RGB, RGBA: Red, Green, Blue (with Alpha) using u8 components.
• RGBf, RGBAf: Red, Green, Blue (with Alpha) using float components.
• LCH, LCHA: Lightness, Chroma, Hue (with Alpha)
• CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key (Black)

The library also includes organized Color Palettes within dedicated namespaces:

• Colors::Primary, or just Colors,
• Colors::Reds
• Colors::Oranges
• Colors::Yellows
• Colors::Greens
• Colors::Cyans
• Colors::Blues
• Colors::Purples
• Colors::Pinks
• Colors::Whites
• Colors::Grays
• Colors::Browns

offering a rich set of predefined swatches for immediate use.

Additionally, we have worked to implement Ansi Escape Codes, console-output utilities, and cross-platform abstraction so that it works the same on Windows and Linux.

Usage

Integrating mcolor into your project is straightforward. Here's a quick sample:

int main() {
#ifdef WIN32
    mcolor::windowsSaneify();
#endif

    mcolor::printBuiltinColorList();
    mcolor::printAnsiColorTable();
    mcolor::printRGBConsoleTest();

  
    for (float i = 0; i < 360; i+=10.f)
    {
        HSVA hsva {i, 1.f, 1.f};

        Color4 c = Color4(hsva);

        std::cout <<  std::format("{}hue:{} rgb: {},{},{} hex: {}", c.ToEscapeCode(), i, c.r, c.g, c.b, c.ToHex()) << std::endl;
    }

    return 0;
}

Acknowledgements

This library was created by maxine, and is currently maintained by Josh O'Leary.

Contributing

Pull requests and issues are always welcome! You know what to do!

License

This work is expressly dedicated to the Public Domain under the Unlicense.