Well, now that you have an introduction to the
physical characteristics of color and a short list of
my favorite color masters, it’s about time that you have some tools to play with color for yourself. As I searched the web, I found tools to help you identify the colors you like, put them together in harmonious ways, and just play around with them. I am going to talk about two tools that I use all the time.
Color Pix – a tool that lets you identify the colors that you see on your computer.
Color Pix in Action - I love BLUE #0000ff!
Color Pix: The color picker tool that I keep coming back to, (and I try a lot of them) is Color Pix. It is a little eyedropper that you can hover over anything on your screen, and find out what color it is!
- It tells you the color values that different color formats use to describe it.
- It tells me where I am on the screen: 136x 272 means 136 pixels over from the left and 272 pixels down from the top.
- It has a built-in magnifier, so that you can zoom in on the exact pixel you want. The zoom goes from 1-2800%, so you can get just the one you want.
- You can click on the value of the color and it copies the numbers right to your clipboard so you can use them in a different application.
- You can even make it stay on top of the other applications, and out of your way.
- Best of all, it is FREE! There are no ads or spyware or toolbars – just a nice tool provided by Color Schemer. They have other nice tools available on their site – like a nice color scheme maker, and I return there often to use their other tools.
Color Values
ColorPix gives you four sets of color numbers:
- RGB: it tells you the amount of red, green and blue in the format as three numbers. They range from 0-255 for each number.
- Hex: This is a hexidecimal code that was developed to identify colors. It tells you the amount of red, green and blue as six digits, from 0-9 and A-F.
- HSB: This code tells you the hue, saturation and brightness for each color. It is coded according to its hue (0-360), the percent of saturation (color vs black), and its percent of brightness.
- CYMK: These four numbers are especially important to commercial printers. The ink is put on the paper in precise combinations of Cyan (aqua blue), Yellow, Magenta, and Black.
Why are the color values important? Let me give you a simple example. The screenshot above is taken from the Beadtrotters website. When we first decided that our logo was going to be four crystal beads in each of our favorite colors, we knew immediately how to identify them to each other. We gave each other the names of our favorite Swarovski crystals, and instantly each of us knew what color that was. Swarovski crystals are only made by one company and the colors are remarkably consistent. But, we didn’t know exactly what color that was when printed on a piece of paper or a displayed on a website.
So I sent them to the
Visibone Color Lab. There is a color wheel with the 216 primary colors that are used on websites, all nicely arranged and labeled. I said click on the colors, see which one is closest to your favorite color and send me the big six-digit code that pops up. Then, it will be consistent in all of our printed materials and our website.
So here is a list of the Beadtrotter’s official colors, as expressed in Swarovski Crystal and Hex Codes.
Beadtrotters Logo: Sue, Judy, Cindy, Paulette
- Sue Stachelski loves FUSCHIA – hex #cc0066
- Judy Menting (me) loves COBALT – hex #0000ff
- Cindy Collins loves FIRE OPAL – hex#ff6600
- Paulette Biedenbender loves BLUE ZIRCON – hex #33ccff
Next time – I will talk more about the different color values.
