How to fade color

Question

I would like to fade the color of a pixel out toward white, but obviously maintain the same color. If I have a pixel (200,120,40), will adding 10 to each value to m

Answer 1

You might want to check out this answer by denis:

RGB -> ^gamma -> Y -> L*

In color science, the common RGB values, as in html rgb( 10%, 20%, 30% ), are called "nonlinear" or Gamma corrected. "Linear" values are defined as

Rlin = R^gamma,  Glin = G^gamma,  Blin = B^gamma

where gamma is 2.2 for many PCs. The usual R G B are sometimes written as R' G' B' (R' = Rlin ^ (1/gamma)) (purists tongue-click) but here I'll drop the '.

Brightness on a CRT display is proportional to RGBlin = RGB ^ gamma, so 50% gray on a CRT is quite dark: .5 ^ 2.2 = 22% of maximum brightness. (LCD displays are more complex; furthermore, some graphics cards compensate for gamma.)

To get the measure of lightness called L* from RGB, first divide R G B by 255, and compute

Y = .2126 * R^gamma + .7152 * G^gamma + .0722 * B^gamma

This is Y in XYZ color space; it is a measure of color "luminance". (The real formulas are not exactly x^gamma, but close; stick with x^gamma for a first pass.)

Finally, L* = 116 * Y ^ 1/3 - 16 "... aspires to perceptual uniformity ... closely matches human perception of lightness." -- Wikipedia Lab color space