Un-safe web color palette:
Web color palettes - part two (part one)
Approach #2, using "un-safe" colors.
This version involves a .png, with about 1400 colors:
(this is a .gif, so everyone can see it in their browser)
A larger version is here, in .png format (your browser may not show it, but your image editing or viewer will.) The .png format is usefull here because it doesn't muddy the colors the way a jpg would, and is quite compact.)
Open your large color palette in you image editing program (Fireworks, Photoshop, PSP, Gimp, etc) and then make a new image
to serve as your color reference for the site. Make some squares, text etc. like so, sampling the colors from your large
palette.
If you wanted to be really organized, you could record the color hex names chosen on it, and save it to your site folder. On a larger site you may have several color schemes, when you come back to a section after six months, it is good to have a record.
Color Mixers:
Of course, you could do the same with the color mixer, but it is nice to see the colors, and easier to reproduce a choice if necessary.
Test your colors:
At the minimum, look at your color choice in both true and high color. Usually this just takes a minute, changing display
properties. The usual gotcha is that the background color in an image doesn't match the page background. If you are on
a Mac, look at it on a windows machine, and visa versa. (windows and macs use a different 'gamma', (very roughly "brightness")
- so particularly important when using close shades or tonal ranges together.
In my opinion, you are no safer with the 216 palette for color predictability, than without it.
Color resources:
moreCrayons A very nice presentation of selecting from 4096 colors. recommended.
A couple sites offer some nifty Javascript color arrangements of a wider gamut: (recent browsers with Javascript)
Unsafe colormatch template
tables of colors per hex codes
and Kilochart available from VisiBone
<<Back to Approach one
Oregon web site design and promotion guide
July 12, 2002
