Using the Colour Palette

The next way to get the colour you want is to use the RGB value of the colour you want.  What's RGB?  RGB literally just means "Red Green Blue" - the 3 primary colours.  Each colour in the spectrum is made up of a certain amount of each of the primary colours and that's all the RGB value is... it just tells the computer how much of each primary colour to use.

Let's play again!  :o)

Bring up your pop-up box again (I'm not gonna tell you how to do it this time... see if you can remember <grin>) - it will still have the same colour in there as you put in last time.

I've decided that I don't really like that colour after all so I'm going to change it.

This time, instead of moving the circle around, we're gonna be playing with numbers (don't worry if you're like me and you're no good at maths though... it's just numbers and we're just playing - there's no maths involved!)

In the bottom half of the box you've got a section called "Current Colour".  The first column of boxes are what we're gonna be playing with now.  

I think I want less red in my colour so lets have a play around with that one first.  There's 2 ways you can do this.  First, you can take away (or add!) a little tiny bit of red at a time, so lets do that first.

In the box where it says "Red:" you'll notice there's a number - it's 234 for me:

Next to that number there are 2 little arrows pointing up and down.  Those are the ones we're going to be playing around with.

Click on one of those arrows depending on whether you want more or less red in your colour... I want less red so I'm gonna click the down arrow once.

Hmmm.  That hasn't done very much to the colour has it?  :o(  Try clicking a few more times to take it up and down.  Takes a while huh?  What if you wanted to add or take away *lots* of that colour?  You'd be there all day clicking on those arrows!!  

Luckily there's a quicker way to adjust the amount of colour if you want to adjust it by lots.  You can either take a guess at the number and type it in the box, or you can use the arrow at the end of the box:

That's what we're going to be playing with now... that little arrow.

Click and hold on that little arrow and a pop-out slider bar will appear with a dark blue line showing you where your colour is right now.

Move your cursor up and down that line and you'll notice the colour in the top box changing as you slide the bar.  Find a colour you like somewhere along that line and release your mouse button 

You can do the same on the Green and Blue colours too.  Try it!  Have a play around with the Red, Green and Blue numbers and try and find a colour that you like.

There's 2 more ways that you can change your colour.  The boxes next door work in the same way as you've just been doing... just click the arrows to find a colour you like.

The final way to change your colour is if you know the HTML code for your colour from a webpage or a tutorial for example.  If you do, just type the number in the last box and there you have it - your colour!  :o)

We're almost there now!  Come with me to the next page where we'll learn about gradients and textures.