What Color is the Sky in Your World?

Eyes are marvels of God's creation and sight is the one sense I can't imagine being without. As far as I know, we all see colors the same way, unless you suffer from some sort of colorblindness or other condition of the eye that affects color perception.

What I mean is that navy blue is navy blue and burgundy is burgundy and so on for all shades of all colors. If we were standing side by side, what I would be seeing as as a blue sky is exactly what you would see as a blue sky. And, if I was also seeing through your eyes at the same time, the sky would appear exactly as it was appearing through my own eyes.

In the world of computers unfortunately, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get, pronounced "Wizzy-Wig") is not true all of the time. This is often quite obvious when it comes to the display of colors. There are 16.7 million (exactly 16,777,216) colors (at 24-bit or "true color") or at 32-bit: 24 bit color with an 8-bit alpha (transparency) channel.

Humans can distinguish anywhere from 380,000 to over 10 million colors, depending on who you believe. Certainly, they can't see all 16.7 million that can be generated on a computer screen. In addition, all video cards and computer monitors are not created equal and users often adjust them according to their liking (brightness, contrast, color hues, etc.) - there is really nothing you can do about that, so don't sweat it.

RIGHT NOW!!!

To be sure you are getting the best out of your monitor, move to your desktop quickly and right click your mouse. Click on "Properties" and then Click on the "Settings" tab. Once there, set your "Color quality" to the Highest setting possible (you should be able to get at least 24-bit. While 16-bit is often okay, some 24-bit or 32-bit colors can look a little "muddy" and some look just awful). Also, to get the best use out of your screen area, move the "Screen resolution" slide bar as far to the right as you can. This will maximize the area you see on your computer screen. If your monitor doesn't support at least 1024 x 768 pixels (which may be as high as you want to go if things appear too small to you), you should think about getting a new monitor. Click on the "Advanced" button and be sure to choose the "Apply the new display settings without restarting" radio button.

WARNING - Follow your computer's suggestions on the "refresh rate." This is how often your screen updates itself; too high a setting and you could damage your monitor (a setting of 60 should be safe on nearly all monitors made since 1997). High "Color quality" settings might cause your computer to slow down if you don't have much memory, or just have an older video card and/or monitor. Lastly (and optionally as this will affect more than the color settings), if you have knobs or buttons to adjust your monitor, find the one to reset it to the manufacturer's settings to be sure you don't have some settings way off.

Welcome back! Hope your screen looks great! If not, you probably need a new video card and/or monitor.

On the Internet, the goal is to have everyone see your website exactly the way you designed it. With all of the problems involved with how different browsers handle layers, tables, and everything else, the appearance of the color is just one (but a very important one). Because everyone won't see your site at a 24-bit setting, the only option is to design for the lowest common denominator which is only 256 colors!

On the Internet, because Netscape chose, long ago, to use a 6 x 6 x 6 "Color Cube" as its standard for its earlier versions, the actual number of colors that all Internet surfers can view is actually 216, not all of the 256 colors on older monitors. Click below: http://www.topsailconsulting.com/draft/colorpalette.cfm to visit a page that we are working on for our website. The page has the 216 colors and displays the hex code when you mouse over a color square. The background for the page also changes to the color you mouse over. We will be adding features to this page over the next few weeks, so check back often. If you design a site using anything other than these 216 "Web Safe Colors" and a user has his monitor's "Color quality" setting at a lower setting that will not exactly display the color you designed for, most browsers will guess and display the nearest Web Safe Color. Unfortunately, that nearest color might be something totally unintended by you.

An example of this is the hex code color #B47865 shown here designed under 32-bit color:

that would appear as hex code #CC6666 under 256 color:

As you can see, the two colors are not as close as one might like. In some cases, exact color matching may not be important, where it is, always go with Web Safe Colors.

And just why are colors so important anyway? Consider the Caterpillar company, makers of giant bulldozers and other earthmoving equipment. Their distinctive yellow color (unpublished, but close to the yellow-green color #E7CC3D)

is a part of its trademark and looks just great outside in the sun. But, when they set up their website, they found that it looked just terrible as a background and in lettering. They went with the better looking Web Safe Color of yellow #FFCC00:

If you can't see the difference, did you adjust your monitor?

Oh, and by the way, the title of this issue comes from the TV show "Cheers" and a remark made by Dr. Fraser Crane (now of the long-running "Fraser" show). The saying has been around for awhile, but on that episode, the ever-wrong, ever-annoying, mailman Cliff Claven was spouting off some pseudo-fact of his when Fraser took a long look at him and said, "I wonder... what color is the sky in your world, Cliff?" I think it's kinda chartreuse, myself. By the way, chartreuse and all its various shades should be stricken from all color charts at once!

Want help avoiding those chartreuse skies? Contact us - this is what we do. Have a great week.

Sincerely,

Bob Cottrell, CEO