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 ...
joojaa's user avatar
  • 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 ...
mayersdesign's user avatar
  • 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, ...
Agent_L's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Stan's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Zach Saucier's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Rafael's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Alith7's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Erik's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Ryan's user avatar
  • 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 ...
joojaa's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Rafael's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Zach Saucier's user avatar
  • 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-...
Billy Kerr's user avatar
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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 ...
Billy Kerr's user avatar
  • 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 ...
prazor9's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Kyle's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Rafael's user avatar
  • 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 ...
BenoitLussier's user avatar
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 ...
joojaa's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Lucian's user avatar
  • 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.
James Douglas's user avatar
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 ...
Ryan's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Wolff's user avatar
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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 ...
Vicki's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Ryan's user avatar
  • 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:
mayersdesign's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Zach Saucier's user avatar
  • 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 ...
user8356's user avatar
  • 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.
Gremlin's user avatar
  • 181

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