Colors

In this post I’m going to address colors as used on web pages.  The light beam of colors from computer monitors, cell phone, etc. goes directly to our eyes and are not reflected off any physical objects.

All colors can be created by different combinations of base colors red (R), green (G), and blue (B).  The system is referred to as RGB.  With 100% of all 3 colors you get white.  And with 0% of all 3 colors you get black.

There are three popular methods to represent the various colors, which can run into millions of different colors.  The first is the hexadecimal system.  It’s structure is two R’s two G’s and two B’s.  It is represented as #RRGGBB.   Each of the six positions are represented by a hexadecimal codes.  The code is compromised of numbers 0 thru 9 and letters A thru F.  This makes for 16 different levels.  And as you can see with 16 possible levels and 6 positions, the number of unique combinations is very very large.

#FFFFFF  is the color white  (100% of all 3 colors)

#000000  is the color  black (0% of all 3 colors)

#FF0000 is red

#00FF00 is green

#0000FF is blue

#FFFF00 is yellow

The second system is the color value system.  It represents each of the 3 colors by numbers 0 thru 255.  It is shown as rgb(R, G, B) .  Therefore:

(255,255,255)  is the color white  (100% of all 3 colors)

(0,0,0) is the color  black (0% of all 3 colors)

(255,0,0)  is red

(0,255,0) is green

(0,0,255) is blue

(255,255,0)  is yellow

With a cross reference you will see that #00Be46 is the same color as rgb(0,42,70).  The letters are case insensitive.

The third system is the color name system.  Here you simply call out the color such as blue, yellow, pink, etc.  This system is limited to around 200 colors.

Just as a comparison, in print media the colors are reflected off objects and then into your eye.  The system is called CMYK.  The C is cyan (basically blue), magenta (basically red), yellow, and K for the key color which is normally black.  In contrast to the RGB system the CMYK system when all colors are 100% then you have black, and when they are 0% the color is white.

Although black can be produced using all the colors, the black key color is used instead.