Installation Guide

Primary Dependencies

• python >= 3.10, < 3.14

• imageio >= 2, < 3

• numpy >= 1.24, < 3

• scipy >= 1.10, < 2

• typing-extensions >= 4, < 5

Optional, Meshing and Plotting Dependencies

• graphviz >= 2, < 3

• matplotlib >= 3.7

• networkx >= 3, < 4

• opencolorio >= 2, < 3

• openimageio >= 2, < 3

• pandas >= 2, < 3

• pydot >= 3, < 4

• tqdm >= 4, < 5

• trimesh >= 4, < 5

• xxhash >= 3, < 4

Development Dependencies

• biblib-simple

• coverage

• coveralls

• hatch

• invoke

• jupyter

• pre-commit

• pyright

• pydata-sphinx-theme

• pytest

• pytest-cov

• pytest-xdist

• restructuredtext-lint

• sphinx

• sphinxcontrib-bibtex

• toml

• twine

Pypi

Colour can be easily installed from the Python Package Index by issuing this command in a shell:

pip install --user colour-science

This asciicast demonstrates how to generate a pristine Python VirtualEnv environment for Colour:

The optional features dependencies are installed as follows:

pip install --user 'colour-science[optional]'

The development dependencies are installed as follows:

pip install --user 'colour-science[development]'

The graphviz figure plotting dependencies are installed as follows:

pip install --user 'colour-science[graphviz]'

The meshing dependencies for gamut computations are installed as follows:

pip install --user 'colour-science[meshing]'

If you wish to read OpenEXR files, you will need to install the FreeImage plugin for Imageio as follows:

python -c "import imageio;imageio.plugins.freeimage.download()"

Continuum Analytics Anaconda

Colour is also available for Anaconda from Continuum Analytics via conda-forge:

conda install -c conda-forge colour-science

This asciicast demonstrates how to generate a pristine Python conda environment for Colour:

Github

Alternatively, you can also install directly from Github source repository:

git clone git://github.com/colour-science/colour.git
cd colour
pip install --user .

uv

Colour adopts uv to help managing its dependencies, this is the recommended way to get started with Colour development.

Assuming python >= 3.10, < 3.13 is available on your system, the development dependencies are installed with uv as follows:

git clone git://github.com/colour-science/colour.git
cd colour
uv sync --all-extras

Those commands will create a Virtual Environment in which all the required python packages will be installed.

Tools can then be run as follows:

uv run invoke -l

or alternatively:

source .venv/bin/activate
invoke -l

Vagrant

An easy way to get all the pre-requisites at once is to use our colour-vagrant environment for Vagrant.

Please refer to the dedicated blog post for more details about its deployment: PyCharm, Vagrant, Ansible & Poetry