Question

I want users on my website to be able to pick a hex colour, and I just want to display white text for dark colours and black text for light colours. Can you work out the brightness from a hex code (preferably PHP)?

Answer 1

$hex = "78ff2f"; //Bg color in hex, without any prefixing #!

//break up the color in its RGB components
$r = hexdec(substr($hex,0,2));
$g = hexdec(substr($hex,2,2));
$b = hexdec(substr($hex,4,2));

//do simple weighted avarage
//
//(This might be overly simplistic as different colors are perceived
// differently. That is a green of 128 might be brighter than a red of 128.
// But as long as it's just about picking a white or black text color...)
if($r + $g + $b > 382){
    //bright color, use dark font
}else{
    //dark color, use bright font
}