The word "hex" indicates "six," and that is how many symbols (letters or numbers) are used to identify each individual color with this system.

In PSP, I set my preferences in the File: Preferences: Dialogs and Palettes. I chose "Display colors in RGB (red green blue) format" and "Hexadecimal display." By doing this, I can coordinate my psp colors easily with colors used on the web.

When in 16+million color mode in PSP, double-click on the foreground color box. You will still have your visible colors that can be picked up with the eyedropper, but you will also have boxes that can be filled in with the color code that matches your web page background.

The three boxes on the left indicate Red, Green, and Blue in order from top to bottom. You would insert the first two symbols from the hex code into the "Red" box, the middle two symbols into the "Green" box, and the last two symbols into the "Blue" box.

The other three boxes will automatically fill in with Hue/ Saturation/ Lightness information...you don't have to do anything with them.

Press "ok" and the new color you've chosen will appear in your foreground box. (If you double click on the background box, you can change it in the same way.)

Hex code is the most reliable way to specify colors (for both background and text) when making pages for the web. Some browsers (like Internet Explorer) read some written color names. But many browsers do not. For the most consistent page viewing on a variety of browsers, hex code is the most precise and best method to use.

Theoretically, any combination of the letters "a" through "f" and the numerals "0" through "9" will give you a color. That gives you millions of possibilities! (And we don't have names for that many colors, so you can see that the IE color "name" system offers a rather limited number of choices. :)

Practically, if you want to be sure that the color you choose actually shows up as the one you wanted on most browsers (including those being viewed in 8-bit [256] color mode), you should use "browser-safe" colors. This 216-color set uses only the letters "c" and "f" and the numerals "0," "3," "6," and "9" for its hexcodes.

Furthermore, almost all of the safe colors are created by using 3 pairs of symbols (letters/numerals). So you could experiment by making up your own combinations to see what you get.

For example, "ccff99" or "3366ff" or "990033." If all six symbols are the same, you will get a greyscale range, from "ffffff" as white through "666666" as a medium gray to"000000" as black.

Here is my chart of all "safe" colors by hex code name on a Black Background.

Here is my chart of all "safe" colors by hex code name on a White Background.

Here's an interesting way to make any of your graphics "instantly" browser safe in Paint Shop Pro. Make a copy of your image, then press Shift + o (the letter).

That brings up your palette dialog. Simply double-click the Safety.pal (it was included on the PSP CD).

All colors in your copy are now in the browser safe palette! (You can drag the eyedropper across and watch the numbers in the color box to verify that the color codes are now in that pattern of paired numbers and letters!)

This is especially effective and useful for images you want to save as GIFs, since it reduces the number of colors to less than 256.

It is not as useful for photos or gradients, since those types of images tend to look posterized with this method. Those images are still best left in 16+million colors and saved as JPGs.

You can have lots of fun experimenting with the code to get an idea of how it works. There are also well-organized references available. Here are some good sources for color charts, codes and information in easy to understand formats.

Lynda's, the first one, is probably my favorite. She's written some books on web color and design that are about the best around.

Lynda's at http://www.lynda.com/hexv.html
Victor Engel's at http://the-light.com/netcol.html
Jeff's at http://www.oocities.org/SoHo/2365/palette.html

If you have comments, questions, or would like further information, please sign my guestbook or contact me at my e-mail address.

Thanks!