Now in beta: DeltaE – a library for quantifying the difference between two colors

I have just published the first beta of my first public crate. DeltaE is a pure-Rust implementation of the International Commission on Illumination’s CIEDE2000 algorithm.

The goal of the algorithm is to put a number on the difference our eyes perceive when looking at two colours. If you’re interested in the details, then I recommend this rundown. In short though:

  • If the returned value is less than 1, then the human eye can’t distinguish between the two colours.
  • If the returned value is greater than 1, then we humans can see a difference when presented with the two colours.
  • The greater the return value, the more difference the human eye perceives.

This crate was written to be used in a project I’m currently tinkering with. It’ll come out of beta once I, and hopefully others, have used it some more and I have improved the test suite.

It is entirely based on Zachary Schuessler’s Javascript implementation of the algorithm. He is also the author of the aforementioned rundown so a huge thank you goes out to him for his work.