In the real world, when working with pigments, we learned the phrase: "yellow and blue make green." We also learned that red and green make something pretty muddy that looks like brown. That is still quite true in the real world, but not in the computer one. In our cyber realities, red and green make yellow and yellow and blue make white, at least at the full intensities of these colors. Why? We've found no definitive answer at this writing, but we think it has something to do with the properties of light in a projected medium such as exists with your monitor. Welcome to the World of RGB (Red, Green, Blue)! These primary colors are represented in HTML code as a six-digit number preceded by the number sign (#), or what the phone company erroneously refers to as the pound sign. The first two digits of the code is the value of red, the second two equal the value of green, and the third two digits equal the value of blue that make up the color. Your computer recognizes them as 16-bit values 0-f (0, 1, 2, 3, ..., 9, a, b, c, d, e, f) in a numeric system called hexidecimal. The two digits render a possible range of intensity of 256 for each of the color values of red, green, and blue. Potentially there are 256 intensities of red times 256 of green times 256 of blue (or a range of 256 cubed, 16-million give or take a couple hundred thousand). By varying the code for a specific color in equal amounts, you could arrive at shades of the color that would compliment each other. Example:

#ff0000 true red	#ffff00 true yellow	#00ff00 true green	#00ffff true cyan	#0000ff true blue	#ff00ff true violet
#990000 dark red	#999900 dark yellow	#009900 dark green	#009999 dark cyan	#000099 dark blue	#990099 dark violet
#ff6666 pink	#ffff66 yellow	#66ff66 green	#66ffff cyan	#6666ff blue	#ff66ff violet
#ffcccc light pink	#ffffcc light yellow	#ccffcc light green	#ccffff light cyan	#ccccff light blue	#ffccff light violet
#ffeeee pale pink	#ffffee pale yellow	#eeffee pale green	#eeffff pale cyan	#eeeeff pale blue	#ffeeff pale violet

The same values were used in the RGB positions throughout this chart, but the results are very different. 00 of a color means none of that primary is present while ff means that the full intensity has been switched on. Generally speaking, the lower the number, the darker such that #000000 equals black while the presence of the other colors cancel or diminish the intensity of the primary rendering the lighter shades toward #ffffff or white. BTW, if you would like to use the colors shown above, they should not dither or rather should dither uniformly such that they will continue to compliment each other. What is this pesky problem called "dithering" I keep referring to? Dithering is caused by differences in the quality of monitors, the user settings, and light projection itself to name a few of the contributing factors. With settings, for example, a color may shift slightly to the nearest compatible the system recognizes, sometimes with horrendeous results. In short, what may look like a red to me, might look like a brown to you and it has nothing to do with our visual accuity or whether we need glasses. In the past, CFC has taken the stance of only offering to you what the experts tell us is a "non-dithering" color chart, which we still offer (see Hexidecimal Color Chart linked below). Similarly, Yahoo! has made a point of offering non-dithering colors from a 256-color pallet in it's customization area. However, because monitors and video cards in general use are getting better, we've decided to add some additional charts to our repertoire.

More Colors

One of the more popular founder clubs, Club Masterz, offers a color chart to its members on its homepage (where they acquired it is anyone's guess, but we do wish we had the original). The chart is, unfortunately, only partially sorted as they present it. Also the size of the chart makes access of its page a little slow. So we've borrowed their chart of colors (some of which are a bit dubious in their values) and created a chart of our own that we hope is a little better sorted for your use. It has been divided across three pages: Cool Colors (blue, blue-green, and green variations), Warm Colors (yellow-brown, red-orange, and purple-violet variations), and Gray Scale Shades. We do not guarantee that these colors will not dither (color shift), however, they do provide a much more varied pallet.

Hexidecimal Color Chart (Non-Dithering 256-Colors)

Cool Colors (Blues, Blue-Greens, Greens)

Warm Colors (Yellow-Browns, Red-Orange, Purple-Violets)

Gray Scale Shades (Black to White)

(FAQs) Frequently Asked Questions

Club Founders' Club Main Page

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This page was last updated on 01/01/2001.