Web safe colors, also called browser safe colors, are specific sets of colors that stay the same and don’t get messed up when shown on different web browsers with 256 colors. This was really important in the early days of the internet when computers only had graphic cards with 256 colors or less. Browsers agreed on a standard set of 216 colors that worked on most screens. Older monitors could only show 16 colors, so a trick called dithering was used to make it look like there were more colors by creating patterns.

Web safe colors are represented by specific RGB values, including 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, and 255. Before Netscape and Microsoft introduced standard palettes, browsers had to use these RGB values to define their web safe colors. Web safe colors are often shown in hexadecimal format, from #000 (black) to #fff (white).

When making a website with a solid color background or creating graphics with see-through backgrounds, it’s best to use web safe colors to avoid display problems and ensure everything looks good. Using non-web safe colors, especially for see-through parts, can make things look fuzzy on some browsers. Dithering can make color changes look smoother and add more colors, but it also makes files bigger, so it’s better to use it carefully, especially for color changes like ombre effects in pictures.

SPOT COLORS

Spot colors, also known as Solid colors, are not like other color codes such as CMYK because they don’t mix colors during printing. Instead, they come in a pre-made formula or a specific ink. For example, imagine a specific shade of blue that might be made through mixing colors in process printing, but with spot colors, you can get that shade of blue already mixed in a formula.

As a designer, you should use spot colors when the job needs very specific colors, like for a brand’s logo. It’s also good for jobs with less than 4 colors as it can be cheaper to print with spot colors. Spot colors are also used for metallic or fluorescent colors that are hard for CMYK to print, for designs with big areas of solid colors that need to match exactly from one piece to another, and for printed pieces with small text.

RGB, CMYK, & HEX

To start, color codes fall into two main categories: Printing and Onscreen. CMYK is used for printing, while RGB and HEX are for onscreen use.

CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), also known as Four-color process, is commonly used for items like brochures, flyers, posters, and postcards. It’s made by combining tiny dots of the four ink colors and overlapping large and small transparent dots to create various colors.

RGB (red, green, blue) is mainly used for computers, TV screens, and mobile devices. Colors are shown onscreen by using combinations of red, green, and blue. This is different from CMYK because it’s an “additive” process. When you take away all three colors, you get black, and when you mix them together, you get white.

HEX (hexadecimal color) is often used by web designers. A hex color is shown as a 6-digit combination of numbers and letters, representing its mix of red, green, and blue (RGB).

Photo by Red Shuheart on Unsplash; edited by Juan Castillo