Web Colors?

DanV · Joined: Feb 03, 2006 Posts: 7

Hi

I'm having a confusing time with this matter. It concerns the colors that I see in my monitor and what others see in theirs. By the way, my natural color vision is good just so you know.

Here is the link to a section on my homepage: http://members.ispwest.com/danielv/bordercolortest.html

I describe it there along with the elements that are the problem and visually you can see the situation.

Any suggestions will be assuredly appreciated.

Thank You

Daniel

silmaril8n · Joined: Jan 29, 2004 Posts: 1743 Location: Phoenix, AZ

When choosing colors for images and backgrounds on my pages I always select them from a web-safe color palette.

http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html

This is a great site that you can use to find the right color for the solution. Also, the web-safe hex for the color you need on your site should be: #666633

DanV · Joined: Feb 03, 2006 Posts: 7

silmaril8n

Thank you for the reply.

Yes, I also came across that particular color wheel while researching around for this and it certainly looks like something to have around for future consultation.

As you know from the page I linked, the thing is why would the border image - downloaded from somewhere else - show differently? Let us assume that I had used the color wheel's recommendation of using #666633 instead of #545245. Perhaps the color would have come out cross-browser with some uniformity but it doesn't address the image issue.

I think as a matter of experimentation I'm going to take that border graphic, desaturate it and give it safe color values to see if there is any change. I will put up the url in a day or so to see how it's seen by others.

The question which comes to me now: Is it possible for an image to be of an unsafe color composition? I'm thinking yes but I guess I will eventually find that out too with certainty.

Daniel

clhenry · Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:46 pm Post subject:

One thing i have found is if you use a program such as NVU to build a web site, Different browsers will show different colored borders. They just read it differently. When this happens i go here
http://www.4greathosting.com/tutorial.htm
and get their html code for the color i want and replace the code with that.

blueknot · Joined: Oct 06, 2004 Posts: 8

Although you sampled from what looks like a mostly greenish border, the color you happened to pick was #545245 -- not far from gray, in fact. Breaking it into RGB, the R (54) and G (52) are almost identical (and as you probably know, if all three are identical, you have a shade of grey.) The B (45) is lower but not far off. So R & G are emphasized slightly, which puts this color in the dark greyish yellow/brown family.

I sampled several pixels and averages from the border and got similar mustard-grey shades, and a few green-gray (#585B4A, for example) ... it's the combination and variation of colors in the border that gives it a color you don't see from an individual sample.

DanV · Joined: Feb 03, 2006 Posts: 7

The mystery is solved - at least relatively

By seeing it for myself again on another monitor I could see that there was a difference but not to the extent that the individual who reported this to me said it was. Avery good example of this came from a web design firm in California who was kind enough to freely send me a snapshot of the image and what I saw more closely resembled what I was seeing. They and others told me not to get overly worked on this as there are always going to be differences in the way monitors are calibrated, ambient light and other conditions.

clhenry:

I have not used NVU or such programs. Some time back I told myself that I would do everything from scratch so I could get as thorough a handle on it as possible. Of course, this does n0t mean that I won't use one in the future since by then I will know immediately if the editor is actually doing what I want to do not to mention that I also know what it is doing in case something seems a little off. I guess for others it could be the other way around in that the editor helps them to learn about coding. Everyone's got their own approach.

blueknot:

Yes, I am aware that it's #545245 and you're quite right, it does lend itself to "slippery" phasing so to speak. What I did was bring up the brightness just a touch on mine and a tad on the Gamma when looking at the excellent hue charts at http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorhslhex10.html . It's in the Hue = 50° section first column row before last. After sampling and converting to hex I went there to double check and it did have a very dark gray/brown tone to it. Now I see exactly where the gray presents itself. With the adjustments the situation is now more understandable. The thing for me was that the person who told me about the difference was emphasizing the gray not only in the background of the text container but also in the image. After seeing the abovementioned screenshot of the border I can see that this is not the case. Obviously for an accurate assessment I would have to travel to see it on the monitor of the person who told me they were seeing gray all around but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Wink

What I like about the result of all of this is that I can keep the monitor at 6500K. The 9300K in experimenting to try and see the gray was just too "cool blue" for me.

Thank you both for your comments.

Daniel

wvperegrine · Joined: Nov 05, 2004 Posts: 21

That's a nice reference link for the hexadecimal colors, Daniel. Thanks for posting it!