94
votes
Accepted
Who first discovered CMYK?
According to Joe Scout the first company to use CMYK in printing was Eagle Printing Ink Company and the year was 1906. It was not until 1956 that it became a standard as a result of Pantone trying to ...
- 57.6k
55
votes
Accepted
How do I make this color combination more readable?
Change the client's mind.
There is nothing that can fix the fact that red text on a blue background is an extremely poor choice for legibility because the contrast is too low, and because specifically ...
- 8,562
44
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
CMYK is an improvement over CMY which itself is improvement over RYB model, which has been used for centuries (if not millennia).
It's really hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, ...
- 541
31
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
There is no single definable point when the CMYK Process Colour printing was discovered. High fidelity process colour reproduction printing has been a gradual series of technical refinements.
The ...
- 5,041
25
votes
Is there a good resource or tool to help build a palette/color scheme around colors I select?
There are a lot of color pickers/generators out there. Most I list here allow you to enter in your own color like you specified:
ColorKitty - Palette from image
Cohesive Colors - New palette formed ...
- 13.3k
24
votes
Generating a series of colors between two colors
Take a look at this answer. How to make a given color a bit darker or lighter?
Where you simply take the separated values of each RGB component and divide the values.
But we have one problem, there ...
- 36.2k
23
votes
How can I detect if a color is gray
With full credit to @Wolff for these images. As was discussed, grey is 100% relative to lighting, surrounding colors, perception, and the method you are measuring. Take these images for example. The ...
- 1,630
18
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
In 1906, the Eagle Printing Ink Company incorporated the four-colour
wet process inks for the first time. These four colours were cyan,
magenta, yellow, and black (also known as key), hence the ...
- 189
17
votes
Accepted
What are the pros and cons of using Lab color?
Lab Primer
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. (Yeats)
Lab, which I often read as Lab but is properly said L-a-b, is amazing. It makes the world a ...
- 23.1k
17
votes
Are spot colors limited and why CMYK mix is not treated same as spot color mix?
Simply:
CMYK is not mixed. A printing process generally do not mix colors. It is kind of the holy grail of printing processes but it does not really exist as of yet.
What happens instead is that ...
- 57.6k
17
votes
Why can colors that don't follow color theory look harmonious?
T h i s d o e s n o t c o m p u t e .
< h u m a n m o d e o n >
Color theory is not about numbers, it is not about angles. Nobody will be around measuring the color angle of the ...
- 36.2k
16
votes
Accepted
Generating a series of colors between two colors
This is called color interpolation. It is what gradients do under the hood. You can do so using a variety of means and methods, and exactly how the results are interpolated depends on the method.
I ...
- 13.3k
16
votes
Are spot colors limited and why CMYK mix is not treated same as spot color mix?
TLDR: No, spot colours are not more limited than CMYK, and they aren't treated the same because they are different printing processes.
Process printing (or CMYK printing, also sometimes called full-...
- 83.5k
16
votes
How can one transform a neutral lookup table texture for color blindness?
I'm not sure you are fully understanding what the Photoshop simulation is showing you here. It shows you what these colours look like for someone with colour blindness. You can't export this as it's ...
- 83.5k
12
votes
Accepted
How to create color scheme from two colors?
You can use coolors.co which is an awesome site, where you can generate awesome color palettes.
there is this cool feature where in you can start with two colors then lock both of them and generate ...
- 232
12
votes
Accepted
Good-to-Bad color scale without green
@Lucien has the right of it. If you need only a color scale (and not a graphic scale) then perhaps a red to yellow stepped blend or a solid red to transparent blend.
It seems to me that any color ...
- 4,061
11
votes
Accepted
How do you find an inverse colour?
Interesting question.
First. Remember that colors can be arranged in a color wheel, but in reality that is not a circle, but a solid, that can come in different shapes, depending on what color model ...
- 36.2k
11
votes
How to argue for color choices?
Color Theory is a really vast area of expertise; I had entire classes on that subject alone when studying Creative arts and Graphic design.
To give you the short answer, there are 2 things you should ...
- 870
11
votes
Why can colors that don't follow color theory look harmonious?
Look. Selecting colors based on a color wheel is an incredibly weak algorithm. For starters, we have not even agreed yet what the color wheel should look like. And obviously, you can not select a ...
- 57.6k
10
votes
Generating a series of colors between two colors
Use a blend in Illustrator in either RGB or CMYK:
create 2 shapes each with the start and end color (one gray and one black in this example, but choose whatever you need)
go to Object → Blend → Blend ...
- 29.1k
9
votes
Is there a single text color that is acceptable on both dark and light background?
Having come across this problem myself, I find that the css colour orangered or #FF4500 works well on almost any colour background that is not reddish or orangeish.
- 191
9
votes
Are spot colors limited and why CMYK mix is not treated same as spot color mix?
Alright a typical printer has 4 cartridges, CMYK. It looks kinda like this with the black cartridge usually a bit larger because it gets used more frequently:
If you print on this printer and the ...
- 23.1k
9
votes
Accepted
Isometric color shading rule for pixel art
Shading isometric pixel art
There is no rule for shading isometric pixel art. It's an aesthetic design decision which depends on the vibe you want your artwork to have.
Even though pixel art is ...
- 20.6k
8
votes
Accepted
How to find a good background color for a 2-color logo
There are lots of rules of thumb you could follow when picking colors! Here is a great post if you'd like a crash course in color theory and color relationships.
The main takeaway:
Color ...
- 3,184
8
votes
Accepted
Regular colors vs Muted colors
There's no exact value that says, "this is muted" but "this is not muted."
If I were to come up with one on the spot as a general starting point I'd say use the HSB color spectrum and lower your ...
- 23.1k
8
votes
Accepted
Highest contrast colour for annotation of greyscale image
Having tried a stroke I think it offers the easiest approach to make any colour stand out regardless of the background tone:
- 8,562
8
votes
Accepted
User Input Color Restrictions
I'd stay away from showing all color options in a color picker like this for a couple reasons: 1) it's frustrating for a user to see (or even choose) options that they can't end up having. And more ...
- 13.3k
8
votes
How do I make this color combination more readable?
You can't. Those shades of red and blue are both dark, saturated colors, they practically vibrate against each other, and that text will make people's eyes bleed. Any developer or designer who doesn't ...
- 1,065
8
votes
How do I make this color combination more readable?
Though by no means perfect (or even good), adding a white (or other) outline to the text can help with readability:
This might be useful if your client insists on keeping the colours.
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