Calculate the color at a given point on a gradient between two colors?

Question

So this is essentially the method I would like to write (in Objective-C/Cocoa, using UIColors, but I\'m really just interested in the underlying math):

Answer 1

RGB color space is like a circle. With highest saturation along the outer border, and grey in the middle. Traveling from one color to another, you'd preferably want to be doing that, along the same radius (circle) from the middle; so as to where saturation and value stay the same. In that case, the hue is changing in a linear fashion. You will not cross into more grey area than your left and right colors initially are. You can travel from an inner ring to an outer ring, simple go up (or down) the saturation; again linearly. See here for color circle (try it in e.g. paint.net)

Apple's (iOS) objective classes allow you to work with other spectra than RGB.

Answer 2

You simply linearly interpolate the red, the green, and the blue channels like this:

double resultRed = color1.red + percent * (color2.red - color1.red);
double resultGreen = color1.green + percent * (color2.green - color1.green);
double resultBlue = color1.blue + percent * (color2.blue - color1.blue);

where percent is a value between 0 and 1 (location in your first method prototype).