HSV to Colortone
Find the closest named color for HSV values.
Type a HSV value or pick a color – the result updates instantly.
Preview
HSV to Colortone Converter
Dial in a color with hue, saturation, and value – the way color pickers in Photoshop, Procreate, or Blender work – and find its closest CSS color name. hsv(150, 60%, 70%) resolves to MediumSeaGreen with a ΔE of just 2.68, close enough that most people would call them the same color at a glance.
The problem with measuring distance in HSV
HSV is a friendly way to choose a color, but a poor way to compare two. It is a cylinder reshaped from RGB, not a model of vision, so equal numeric steps do not look equal:
- Hue steps are uneven – yellows and greens change quickly, blues slowly.
- At low value (near black) every hue and saturation looks almost the same, yet HSV reports big differences.
- Hue wraps around, so 359° and 1° are neighbors even though the numbers are far apart.
That is why the tool converts your HSV input to CIELAB and ranks names with CIEDE2000. Its ΔE result behaves consistently across the whole color wheel: a ΔE of 3 in the blues looks about as different as a ΔE of 3 in the oranges.
Worked example
A warm golden yellow, hsv(45, 90%, 95%) (HEX #F2BC18):
| Rank | Name | HEX | ΔE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GoldenRod | #DAA520 | 6.50 |
| 2 | Gold | #FFD700 | 7.69 |
| 3 | Orange | #FFA500 | 10.21 |
By hue alone Gold (about 51°) looks like the better fit, since GoldenRod sits at about 43°. But GoldenRod's lightness and chroma are closer, and CIEDE2000 weighs all three together – so GoldenRod wins.
Tips for artists and illustrators
Use the six candidates as a vocabulary for your palette: naming layers "goldenrod highlight" or "sea green shadow" makes files easier to share. To turn the HSV value into code, use HSV to HEX, or go back from a name with Colortone to HSV.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why not just compare HSV numbers to find the nearest name?
HSV is not perceptually uniform. A 20° hue shift in yellow looks much larger than the same shift in blue, and saturation changes near black are almost invisible. Comparing in CIELAB with CIEDE2000 gives rankings that match what people see.
Which HSV formats are accepted?
hsv(150, 60%, 70%), hsb(150, 60%, 70%), 150, 60, 70, or 150 60 70. Hue is in degrees from 0 to 360; saturation and value are percentages.
Which HSV values match a color name exactly?
Many basic names sit on round HSV values: hsv(240, 100%, 50%) is Navy, hsv(0, 100%, 50%) is Maroon, and hsv(120, 100%, 50%) is Green. Small rounding means the ΔE may show a tiny value like 0.1 instead of 0.