Hacker News Reader

Hue is the angular dimension in the cylindrical color geometry. It starts with the primary color red at 0deg, moving through the primary color green at 120deg, and through the blue primary at 240deg before finally wrapping back to red at 360deg. The cylindrical color geometry is easy to visualize in one's mind. For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSV_color_space

View on HN

But surely both the location of the "zero" hue and the directionality of where it goes from there are both arbitrary? I didn't know red was 00 until you mentioned it.

It makes sense in terms of physics. Start at 0, red, the beginning of the visible spectrum, and the number increases along with the wavelength, all the way through violet, the other end of the visible spectrum.

Sadly, after hue goes through violet, it then disappears into magenta, which isn't in fact a colour on the spectrum at all, before arriving back at red when it reaches 1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com