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 Color Yourself In!

"Color Yourself In" is a series of illustrations that will help you learn how to identify and use the RGB color system. In this first post, I'll be introducing different ways to represent the colors of the RGB color model, then explaining some conventions commonly used when you're working with computer graphics, and finally provide a few resources to take your exploration further.

In computer graphics, it's very common for people to represent colors using three numbers (or values). For example: 255 red 170 green 64 blue. You might have seen this format in Photoshop or while playing around with art apps on your phone. What are these numbers? They specify how much red, green and blue there are in that particular color.

However, the RGB color system has another format to describe colors. When you add up these three numbers (called red, green, and blue values), the resulting value is known as a chromaticity value. In other words, it's how much of each primary color there is in that particular color. The chromaticity values for the RGB color system are specified by a mathematical formula. For example:

RGB=(R+G+B)/3

You can see from this formula that the higher the number, the more red and green there is in that particular color; similarly the lower the number is, the more blue there is.

There are a lot of different chromaticity values. For example, the spectrum of primary colors — Red, Green and Blue — is divided into these values:

R=0 to 1.0 G=0 to 0.5 B=0 to 0.2

(You can find more chromaticity values on this Wikipedia page ). However, there are a lot more chromaticity values than these primary ones. Each color in the RGB color space can be expressed by an infinite number of chromaticity values (although not all of them are used).

Now let's look at an example of how to display the color #FFC7C3. This color is a combination of red, green and blue (Red = 255, Green = 170, Blue = 64). How can we display this color in various ways?

The lightest area in this image is at the bottom left of this image; so we'll start there:

Colors on web front-end vs. graphics programs Colorschemes Colors on web front-end vs. graphics programs Colors on web front-end vs. graphics programs

You may have noticed that the top-right corner of this color box is actually a stop sign, with red, yellow and green lights. This is the way an artist might represent the amount of red, green and blue in a particular color. The stop sign is called a color wheel or hue circle.

The top half of this hue circle represents the primary colors (Red, Green and Blue), while the bottom half represents all the possible combinations of these three colors. It's important to remember here that Red+Green ≡ Yellow and Red+Blue ≡ Magenta, so you have to be careful not to add these numbers up in your mind.

Colors on web front-end vs. graphics programs

Colors on web front-end vs. graphics programs

So far, we've only talked about colors that have a ton of red, green and blue in them. However, there is actually an entire range of colors in the RGB color system that are full of yellow and magenta (called secondary colors). In fact, if you add all the colors in this hue circle together (and then add black), you'll end up with the secondary colors: Yellow, Magenta and Cyan. These three color can be combined to form other colors, e.g.: red = yellow + magenta; green = cyan + magenta; blue = cyan + yellow.

It's important to remember again, that the RGB color system has a lot more chromaticity values than just primary and secondary colors. Here are some of the others:

Purple (R=0.65, G=0, B=0.35) Very dark orange (R=0.85, G=0.25, B=0) Blue-purple (R=0.90, G=0.20, B=0) Blue (R = 0.75,G = 0.25 ,B = 0.00) Light greenish blue (R = 0.45,G = 0.60,B = 0.40) Greenish blue (R = 0.60,G = 0.50,B = 0.00) Light blue (R=0.60,G=0.50,B=0) Violet (R=0.45 ,G=(−4), B=(−7) Violet may look purple to you but it's actually closer to this color purple than this color purple is to violet.) Cyan (R=0.20 , G=(−4), B=(−5)) Cyan may look magenta to you but it's actually closer to this color magenta than this color magenta is to cyan.) Yellow (R=0 .5 ,G=(−8), B=(−2)) Yellow may look orange to you but it's actually closer to this color orange than this color orange is to yellow.) Orange (R=1.00, G=(−3), B=(−3) ) (Red + Yellow = Orange) Dark Blue (R=0.20, G=0.50, B=0) Dark Purple (R=0.20, G = 0.10, B = 0.20) 2nd Blue (R = 0.30,G = 0.50, B = 0.10) 2nd Purple (R = 0.30, G = 0.10, B = 0.20) Dark green (R=0.75 , G=(−4), B=(−4)) ((C + M) + Y) + K

You can find more of these values on this Wikipedia page .

At this point, you might be wondering, why do we need this huge range of possible colors? Do artists really need colors that are really really dark, or really really pale? And why does everything look so washed out when we represent colors using RGB color scheme? We'll explore these questions in the next post.

1. The color system on display 2. Color wheels and Hue circles 3. Increasing chromaticity values 4. Unit conversion 5. Expanding your knowledge 6. Further reading & References 7. License info & Thank you! 8. Code and Resources used to produce images 9.

Conclusion:

See, the human eye is actually able to see a lot more than just red, green and blue. In fact, it's able to see almost every color that's out there! We just need to divide our spectrum of light into smaller pieces. That way we're able to see these other colors as well. But remember: When displaying these colors on a computer monitor or TV screen, you only need three (Red, Green and Blue) of those many possible color components.