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I have some brand guidelines.

One of the main colours is #004F6B. The guidance advises the use of "10% tints" to expand the palette. The suggested tints for this colour are:

100% #004F6B
 90% #2f6077
 80% #437186

I've tried various online tools and I can't find any method/process to apply a "tint" and get these results.

What process have they used and how can I replicate that in CSS without defining every "tint"?

.: edit 2 :.

Turns out the HEX/HTML values given for the tints do not match the colours swatches shown... so the guidelines were basically wrong.

.: edit 1 :.

It was suggested I add the full range:

Core colour swatch

Tints colour swatch

As text:

100%
C100 M18 Y12 K59
HTML 004F6B

90%
C82 M49 Y35 K22 
HTML 2f6077

80% 
C79 M39 Y32 K16 
HTML 437186

70% 
C67 M35 Y31 K12 
HTML 598395

60% 
C62 M28 Y28 K7 
HTML 0a0a0a

50% 
C51 M24 Y24 K4 
HTML 87a6b3

40% 
C45 Y20 Kl 
HTML 9fb8c2

30% 
C33 M14 Y16 Kl 
HTML b7cad1

20% 
C24 M8 Y11 K0 
HTML cfdbe1

10%
C11 M4 Y6 KO0
HTML e7edf0
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  • Ask some designers at the brand to see if they know
    – Zach Saucier
    May 14, 2022 at 13:07
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    In my experience, brand guidelines often have errors, inaccuracies and simplifications when it comes to colors. It can drive you mad trying to find logic where there perhaps is none. These tints could even be tints of CMYK colors converted to RGB or they could just be freestyled. We can't really know so I'm voting to close the question.
    – Wolff
    May 14, 2022 at 13:41
  • Thanks @Wolff and user287001 - both of these are more useful than you might realise. Not sure why you didn't post them as actual answers? As a novice, I really just needed to confirm my suspicion that there wasn't some well know system at work here.
    – dtw
    May 15, 2022 at 16:13
  • Well, my comment doesn't really answer your question. If I were to attempt a real answer I would feel I had to go through different methods of tinting a color to see if I could find out what the designer did. But perhaps I would still just come to the conclusion that we can't know. And I also fear that just having 3 tints taken out of context might be too little to analyze. If for example the tints come from CMYK colors as I suggested, it would be nice to have all the colors from the brand guidelines for comparison.
    – Wolff
    May 15, 2022 at 21:04

1 Answer 1

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A tint of an RGB colour would be calculated by merging it with white, at various opacities.

There is a formula for this, courtesy of User: JBE on Stack Overflow, and this answer here.

newR = currentR + (255 - currentR) * tint_factor
newG = currentG + (255 - currentG) * tint_factor
newB = currentB + (255 - currentB) * tint_factor

The tint factor works like this, where 0=100%, 0.1=90%, 0.2=80%, etc.

I tried it out using a spreadsheet to calculate the values, and used them in Inkscape to create a swatch. Seems to work quite well.

enter image description here

Edit: I examined the colours in a more detail after you posted the complete swatch, and they are not exactly the same as those calculated using the formula above. However these are likely caused by rounding errors in the multiplication of the tint factor, since the result will not be whole numbers. However the difference between the example swatches, and the result using the formula to calculate them is not visible to the human eye. I wouldn't sweat the difference to be honest.

Further edit: and in fact the rounding error can be rectified by adding 0.5 to the final calculation in a spreadsheet - which I forgot to do, then when converting back to hexadecimal the numbers should round up to match exactly. Here's the spreadsheet on Google Sheets if you want it.

enter image description here

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10
  • And does that actually yield the actual RGB values cited in the question? Sadly, I cannot accurately gauge hex values just by looking at a colour in an image…
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    May 15, 2022 at 11:26
  • It doesn't yield the exact values, no, but it does give me some idea of how it might have been done!
    – dtw
    May 15, 2022 at 16:14
  • Having compared the swatches side-by-side rather than just the hex values, I can see that they are basically identical. Maybe 1 point off here and there in RGB but I assume this is due to the original hex being coverted to RGB. So, yes, this does seem to be the method used!
    – dtw
    May 16, 2022 at 11:36
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    @BillyKerr yeah different rounding. Try rounding up.
    – joojaa
    May 16, 2022 at 14:01
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    @joojaa - oops, yeah I forgot to add 0.5 to each decimal calculated to round up. So, the results are actually a perfect match.
    – Billy Kerr
    May 16, 2022 at 14:13

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