HSL Sliders with Hex Code

[Pypertog]

Is there any way of adjusting the HSL slider with a hex code - say for example you have a specific colour green you want but don’t know how to achieve it with the sliders but you have the exact hex code? 

[Akash Sharma]

Hi there,

Thanks for providing such a great feedback. Currently I don't think that there is a way to align HSL sliders with the color HEX codes.

I'd request to add this as a feature request on our Lightroom CC feedback community here: Lightroom Classic CC | Photoshop Family Customer Community ​

Our Engineering team monitor this space to prioritize the features bucket for future updates and the one you've suggested could be a great feature for better color management across different websites.

Regards,

Akash

[ManiacJoe]

Akash has you pointed in the right direciton for the enhancement request.

To get you going in the meantime, the Windows calculator app does hex to decimal conversions. I am assuming that the Mac calculator has the same feature.

[richardplondon]

Achieving a specific colour of green, say, is a matter of watching the colour value for a chosen point within the picture. Any colour value has meaning only in reference to a stated model, e.g. sRGB. Hovering the mouse pointer over the picture, the numerical readout just below the Histogram normally refers to the Lightroom internal colour model ("Melissa") in a 0-100 scale for red, blue and green. Unlike Photoshop, there is no ability AFAIK to see Hue values separate from Saturation or Lightness; only RGB. Those LR-internal RGB numbers will be very hard to relate to any desired target colour.

However, by enabling Softproof mode (most likely, sRGB will be the appropriate colourspace) the numerical readout switches to 0-255 for each of red, green and blue whereby these numbers DO represent particular colours as described by the sRGB colour model. So translating Hex colour coordinates into Decimal, which is a simple conversion, one can directly work to a target value. 

One detail to be aware of: once you start making adjustments while in Softproof mode, LR automatically creates - if needed - a brand new (virtual) "proofing copy", to which those proofing adjustments can be applied. They can then be copied / synced back to the master version, or otherwise this new virtual copy can be switched so that it becomes the master version of that photo.

[Conrad_C]

Using a hexadecimal to HSL/HSB color value calculator won't be a reliable way to do it, because of the color space issue that richardplondon brought up. A specific color value looks different in the traditional web color space of sRGB than it does in the much larger internal color space of the Develop module in Lightroom Classic. Such a calculator might work if it also lets you specify the color space.

But if you have Lightroom Classic then you also have Photoshop, and you can use its color picker to convert between hex and decimal RGB witht a document set to a specific color space. You can see the problem in the picture below: Both the left (sRGB) and right (ProPhoto RGB) documents show a solid color with exactly the same color values, but the green looks more saturated in ProPhoto RGB (as in Lightroom) because that color space is larger.

The bottom line is that Lightroom Classic is designed for editing photographs using a full color range, not restricted to traditional web colors. If you want to edit images while limiting them to a web-friendly sRGB color space while being able to specify hex color values, it's best to edit them in Photoshop with the document color space set to sRGB.

[richardplondon]

A "hex" value as I understand it, refers to merely a base 16 number which equates to a decimal 0-255 value in each channel of RGB. So HSL, or Lab, are beside the point IMO. If one starts from the assumption that these 0-255 values are intended to have sRGB 'meaning', all one then needs is to compare these against an sRGB preview. Softproofing can deliver that inside LR.

AFAICT regardless of display technicalities such as 'simulate' blacks and paper colour etc, going just by the number readout, that method should be a reliable precursor to the actual output when sRGb is selected for that; assuming the same rendering intent is employed. But if you want to know whether you have achieved the same HUE, that's a lot harder to assess just from RGB values.

Hence my suggestion, made in another similar thread recently, of putting some colour patches of the desired RGB values (under sRGB) into a transparent PNG image and then loading / unloading that as a 'Loupe Overlay', allowing direct visual comparison within LR.