Colour Code Converter

In short HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, CMYK and LAB all describe the same colour, and the reason there are six of them is that each one is easy to reason about for a different job. HEX and RGB are storage formats — compact and exact, and almost impossible to adjust in your head. HSL is the one to think in: hue, saturation and lightness are three dials you can turn independently, so lightening a colour means changing one number instead of guessing at three. CMYK is for print and is the only conversion here that loses something real, because ink covers a smaller range of colours than a screen does. LAB is the odd one out and the most useful of the lot for a specific question: it is built so that equal numerical distances look like equal visual differences, which is why it is what tools use to find the nearest named colour or the closest match in a palette. Convert freely between them, but pick the space that matches the decision you are making. The commonest mistake is editing HEX values by hand — nudging 3a7bd5 towards a lighter blue is guesswork, while raising HSL lightness from 53% to 65% is not.