Saturday, July 09, 2005

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Hex codes for Colors (RGB)


While editing an HTML page, doing an animation job, or even
editing a photo you might encounter some weird color code in the
program which looks like #FFFFFF. Instead of trying to understand
the code, you would just use it with the help of some web palette
or any editing program. However, this code actually gives a lot
of ideas how the display of a computer or even the TV works.

The three primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. Remember that
from elementary school art? They're called the primary colors
because there are no two "lesser" colors that make them up.
Purple is not a primary color because it can be created through
combining equal parts of blue and red. In the world of mechanical
things that make color, like a television, or a computer screen,
color is created through the mixing of three basic colors to make
other colors. It's a process known as "additive color".

You would think that the TV's and computer monitors of the world
would simply use the three primary colors to start with, but
nothing in life can just be that easy. The three colors used to
start additive color mixing are red, green, and blue. By
starting with one composite color, green, you can still create
yellow because it's included in the green. In addition, now you
are actually starting with four colors, red, green, blue, and
yellow. The second process of working with colors is "subtractive
color." Subtractive color is the concept of combining colors to
make another, like mixing red and blue paint to get purple. That
may sounds like additive color, but in reality, colors are made
by subtracting a hue out of the color scheme by adding more of
another. Adding more white to black makes it more silver
subtracting more black as more white is mixed in. If you add all
the colors together in a subtractive color method, you get black
because you added them all together and all those colors
subtracted from all the others leaving no set color: black.

A computer, on the other hand, works with light, not paint or any
other goopy stuff. Mix a computer's additive colors, red, green,
and blue, together, you get white. Shine a white light at a prism
or a lead crystal glass. You'll get a rainbow of colors.
Actually, that's how a rainbow is created. White light is being
shown through water in the air. That separates the white light
into the "rainbow" of colors. You can also try the “Newton Color
Cycle”, paint a circle with all the colors of a rainbow light a
bulb on it and turn the circle in an adequate speed; you will
actually see a white surface.

The hexadecimal code that describes the colors while dealing with
computers works with the same principle, the 6 digit “number”
represents the hues of three additive colors in two digits,
namely red, green and blue. Hexadecimal system has 16 digits
starting from 0 till F meaning number 16.

For instance #FFFF00 would represent yellow. Notice the red and
the green are at full tilt. There is no blue. By mashing the red
and green up against each other, the red cancels out the blue and
all that is left is the yellow. It's actually a subtractive color
method being employed in an additive world.

Another example can be DC143C. This code creates a shade of red
called "crimson." The red setting, DC, is pretty intense. There's
not much green. Blue is set a little less than halfway up. As you
can see easily hexadecimal code is just about adjusting the right
hue. Considering the 3 different colors with, 00 to FF, 256
different hues; we end up with 256-3 different colors which
explain our 64 bit representation of colors.

So the next time you’re in need of riveting conversation, you can
bring up your new knowledge about Hex codes for colors!

Author
George Whitecraft

http://whitecraftshoppingmarketing.biz/tbp/The_Business_Professional.html
http://whitecraftshoppingmarketing.biz/pba/index.htm

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