Hue (H)

Hue is the color family – its position on the color wheel, usually expressed in degrees:

• Hue 0 → Red
• Hue 30 → Orange
• Hue 60 → Yellow
• Hue 120 → Green
• Hue 180 → Cyan / Teal
• Hue 240 → Blue
• Hue 300 → Magenta / Pink
• Hue 360 wraps back to Red

Lightness (L)

Lightness describes how light or dark a color is. Imagine a slider from black to white:

• L0 → pure black
• L100 → pure white
• Values in between are progressively lighter steps of the same hue

In the built-in palette, each hue family has a little ladder of Lightness values so you can move from deep ink to soft highlight without changing hue family.

Saturation (S)

Saturation is the intensity of the color:

• Low S → muted, dusty, greyed-out
• Medium S → natural, everyday colors
• High S → loud, neon, digital-feeling colors

Putting it together

A label like Hue 210 • L70 means:

• Hue 210 → a blue-family hue
• L70 → fairly light

Same hue, different Lightness values → a controlled, predictable ladder you can climb when you’re designing.

Why this matters in Palette Grabber

Palette Grabber samples pixels, finds their hue and lightness, then organizes them into palettes so you see structure instead of just random colors. The built-in swatches are a stable reference, showing how hue and lightness behave in a clean, regular grid.