Everything you ever wanted to know about colors but were afraid to ask.
36
votes
5answers
2k views
Are “web-safe” colors still important?
Years ago, it was always strongly recommended that web designers should only use web-safe colors.
Have studies been done to see if this is still the case? If so, what's the answer?
Edited to add…
...
31
votes
8answers
5k views
What kind of black should I use when designing for CMYK print?
my question is what kind of black should I use when printing.
At the moment I use this black (split into CMYK) :
C:0%
M:0%
Y:0%
K:100%
It looks fine in InDesign or Illustrator but if I save a PDF ...
27
votes
8answers
975 views
Is there a good resource or tool to help build a palette/color scheme around colors I select?
No matter how nice the composition, flow, and lines of my design are, if I am not copying directly from nature, I have a very difficult time picking a decent color scheme. It either looks too drab, ...
23
votes
8answers
5k views
What is the difference between CMYK and RGB? Are there other color spaces I should know?
I'm a photographer, who dabbles in graphic design from time to time as well. What are the differences between the various color spaces?
22
votes
6answers
958 views
Sources for Color Theory or Psychology of Color
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good book/blog/forum that focuses on design principles such as psychology of color, specifically where it relates to picking a color palette for a communication ...
20
votes
10answers
578 views
What web graphics formats to use?
Web sites can contain JPEG, GIF, and PNG format graphics. Which ones should be used, and when?
17
votes
2answers
534 views
How can I improve my color selection skill?
I'm a web developer, started to become a web designer. However, I think my understanding of colors is not practical yet. There are tools out there that can give you color harmonies, and more stuff, ...
15
votes
4answers
3k views
What's the difference between CMYK Black and RGB Black
I know this sounds a stupid question, black is black right?
Wrong:
It's black right? so why are the CMYK Values so far away from black?
15
votes
3answers
954 views
How do I make screenshots look good when printed in CMYK?
Whn printing screenshots alongside black text, black areas of the screenshot look a washed out muddy dark grey - what causes this and can I improve matters?
12
votes
5answers
1k views
Large color set for coloring of many datasets on a plot
I need large set (20 and more) of contrasted and easily visually distinguishable colors for coloring different datasets on a scientific plot (the set of colors should not include write and black and ...
12
votes
2answers
692 views
Clearly distinguishable colours for scientific figures
I am looking for pointers on how to pick a set of colours (or a colour gradient) that are clearly distinguishable, for use in scientific figures. Was there any systematic research on this? If yes, ...
11
votes
2answers
344 views
What effect do gradient fills have on the eye?
There are many baseline rules in web design (and design in general) around how the use of color, shape, line-quality, and font. These rules typically have some grounding in the way the brain perceives ...
9
votes
5answers
4k views
What is 5-colour printing?
When my print rep talks about five-colour printing, what does he mean? I know you have cyan, magenta, yellow and black - but what's the fifth?
9
votes
5answers
34k views
How do I change a single layer to grayscale in Photoshop CS4?
I know you can have the whole image turn grayscale: Image > Mode > Grayscale, but what if I only want to make specific layers grayscale? There's gotta be an easier way than pulling out the layers you ...
9
votes
1answer
197 views
How to make a color APPEAR the same on different backgrounds?
Background on color perception:
Due to the nature of the human eye and visual processing by the brain, there's an optical illusion that the same color will look different depending on the background. ...
8
votes
9answers
4k views
Good color palette, usable for the color blind.
I'm designing a chart right now, that will slowly have more items added to it. I'd like to create an list/order of colors for the items, that will be most usable for the color blind to differentiate ...
8
votes
4answers
302 views
Do high-content areas of a website need to be white/light-colored?
Many websites that are designed to be easy to read (eg. nytimes.com or ilovetypography.com) use white backgrounds with black fonts to make the content easy to read. Is it necessary to only use light ...
8
votes
2answers
561 views
Why is this gradient considered metallic chrome?
Why is the "white to brown & white to blue" gradient generally considered a shiny metal?
What is the reasoning/theory behind this? Why those colours? (If someone says chrome, you might first ...
8
votes
2answers
322 views
Why does anti-aliasing in black characters use colors other than gray-scale ?
I'm a developer, I'm not a graphic designer. But there's one question that bugs me every since I've noticed it some years ago.
Anti-aliasing is a method for removing the sharpiness from high contrast ...
8
votes
2answers
731 views
How to calculate other colors with the same perceived lightness as a given gray value?
This is related to a question I asked on tex.stackexchange, which has a color aspect. The result of that question is the following image:
I have drawn a series of gray squares on the left, with a ...
8
votes
3answers
520 views
What's a good source of color palettes to provide to a color-blind user?
There's a question on this site already about choosing good color palettes when designing for color-blind users. My question is different — it's about working with colors for an audience with normal ...
7
votes
5answers
1k views
How can I get the closest color word for a hex color?
Say I have a color like #7B0D40. Are there any tools out there to output the nearest human-understandable word for that color? (Like #7B0D40 ~= Magenta?)
I know there's ways to search the words used ...
7
votes
3answers
656 views
Choosing colors that work well on projectors
When specifying colors for use in a software user interface, what's the best way to ensure that those colors will look acceptable on all common display technologies: CRT, LCD, and in particular ...
7
votes
4answers
890 views
Why is black not a natural color?
I've had at least two art teachers tell me that black does not naturally occur in nature, so using pure black makes your designs look synthetic. I do not understand this. Aren't the following black ...
7
votes
1answer
374 views
Contrast ratio between foreground and background
What is an acceptable contrast ratio between a foreground and its background?
7
votes
3answers
1k views
Do you use colour lasers for proof printing?
I own an EPSON Stylus Photo RX640 printer which prints really good on special paper media, but is rather poor when it comes to normal (>75%) printing on plain papers. Beside that it's also quite ...
7
votes
3answers
138 views
What colors are good to avoid eye fatigue in dark environments?
I'm working on a program that requires a dark interface, because it's mostly used in dark rooms. After some thought I decided to add a light version too and let the user swap them, but both still have ...
7
votes
2answers
94 views
Calibrating a screen on a budget?
How would you calibrate a screen on a budget?
Are there simple, affordable devices, methods, or printed kits that help achieve at least some degree of colour correctness on a modern TFT monitor?
...
7
votes
1answer
79 views
Is there a metric for “apparent” chroma?
I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but is anyone aware of a metric for apparent chroma?
Now I understand that "chroma" and "chrominance" are very overloaded terms, so to clarify, I ...
6
votes
10answers
495 views
Are there examples of software that use a dark colour scheme?
A client told me they want something with more a design software feel rather than web 2.0 feel, particularly something with a dark colour scheme. So now I am looking for some examples to show to him. ...
6
votes
1answer
107 views
Tips for using poor colours well
This is less of a question with a definitive answer and more of a request for some tips. I am hoping that some of you may had had this problem yourself and can offer some advice.
I have been ...
6
votes
2answers
7k views
Good color to go with black & white design?
What's a good color to go with a black and white design, if there will only be one color on the site? I've tried using color palettes but they're not very helpful, because if the first two colors are ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
What CMYK values should I use for rich black, and how should I handle tints/shades?
I'm working on a full color piece in Illustrator which has a few large black and grey areas.
I'd like the black to be a rich black. I was thinking c30 m30 y30 k100. What is the best ways to match my ...
6
votes
1answer
140 views
Never use white?
There was a famous blog post by Ian Taylor called "Never use black", in which he explained that one should never use pure, complete, 0-0-0 black, and should instead put a little bit of color or light ...
6
votes
2answers
230 views
How do you avoid bands of prominent color in gradients?
So this is more scientific visualization than graphic design, but I think the theory is the same. In colormaps used for visualizing data, there are often bands of color that stick out when they ...
6
votes
1answer
2k views
How can I map the colors in a greyscale image to a specific color “gradient”?
Caveat: I'm not a graphic designer and may be misusing some terminology. Please bear with me. :-)
I'm attempting to add color to some greyscale icons (i.e. all three channels are identical). I ...
5
votes
5answers
395 views
How do I get rid of a background color (with a glow)
I have this image:
Is there any way to get rid of the red background (make it transparent) yet keep all the glow effects? So far I've only been able to remove the pure-red parts of the image, yet ...
5
votes
3answers
411 views
How do I turn a full color design, into a 1-color design?
I was asked to design a piece of junk-mail advertising. It has to be one color. Here are links of how it should look:
What I want to know is, how do you get your design like that?
It's like ...
5
votes
5answers
170 views
Text effect on any background color
I want to display a text over a video. However, the video may include any color from white to black. What is the best text effect (color/stroke/shadow/glow ... etc) that can be applied on the text so ...
5
votes
3answers
337 views
How many colors should be used in a background gradient?
For on-screen design (web or desktop applications), in areas where there is significant background space visible, a subtle gradient adds a lot to the look of the app/page/image. How many colors (max) ...
5
votes
5answers
218 views
How to create a color tinted black and white effect?
I was wondering how I would go about recreating this look on a photo using Photoshop?
5
votes
3answers
103 views
Are there any color palette choosing tools that make it easy to incorporate black/gray/white?
I always have a difficult time choosing color schemes and I think I often end up overloading my designs with color because there's "just something missing." Today I realized that part of the problem ...
5
votes
6answers
260 views
Is there a best way to convert an image from colour to black&white?
This is a simple question but it doesn't seem to be here.
My question: Is there a better way to convert a colour image into a B&W (in photoshop) one than just changing the 'mode' of the image? By ...
5
votes
2answers
713 views
What is the fastest way to copy a colour in Photoshop as HEX?
A lot of designers use Photoshop as a design and mockup tool. And in doing so, one of the last steps can be to get a lot of the colour information out so things like gradients and dynamic text can be ...
5
votes
2answers
3k views
How does a monitor display the CMYK color? Is it actually showing the true CMYK color?
Just few moments ago I asked a question regarding RGB to CMYK conversion.
say, RGB (86,92,214) the color in my image. Then monitor uses same values for displaying (lightning LEDs, LCDs or CRTs). ...
5
votes
2answers
188 views
Prepare a design for CMYK printing
This was asked in another thread. When I searched to see if this question has been asked before it was not. Per Meta we are encouraged to create threads that show quality solutions or to future ...
5
votes
3answers
928 views
Completely different interpretation of Pantone to RGB values depending where I look.
I'm making a web site and have been told the corporate color is pantone 2745.
In illustrator, here, and here it is a deep indigo color.
Here, here, here and here it is a deep violet sort of color.
...
5
votes
3answers
187 views
Graphic Design areas for the colour-blind?
What areas, if any, of graphic design could a person with color blindness be active in?
Can a person who has problems differentiating colours actually work in such a field?
5
votes
3answers
3k views
Good background and text colors for a website with both photos and text
I put both photos and significant blocks of text on a couple of websites I run. Currently, I'm using white text on black or dark gray. It's getting a bit old, and I think I'd prefer text darker than ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Good monitors for graphic design / printwork ?
I am working primarily in book graphic design: edit images, color profiles, do the layout of the book, prepare it for print etc. Sometimes I do logos, corporate identity packages etc. I do not do ...
