Web Site Design

Web Site Color (RGB) Hex Codes

by Kenneth Catto

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!