216 Web Safe Colours

=== by Bob Sutherland ===

Introduction

When I started creating my own colour charts one of the first things I noticed was that I was basically working with three groups of colours. The first group was the simple grey scale where the values for red, green and blue (RGB) light intensity were all equal. The second group was when two out of three of the RGB values were the same. The third group was the colours that had different values for each of the red, green and blue (RGB) light intensities.

There are three colour charts on this page. Some of the charts I have made multiple versions of by rearranging the colours to see how it might change the perspective and appeal of individual colours. My Triangles and Pyramids for 216 Colours web page contains colour charts that are subsets of the charts on this page.

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Grey Scale - All Three RGB Colours are Equal

When the light intensity values of red, green and blue (RGB) are all equal then the resulting colour is some shade of grey in the range from black to white. If the values of red, green and blue are 00 then the colour is black meaning that black is created from the absence of light. If the values of red, green and blue are FF then the colour is white meaning that white is created from the maximum intensity of red, green and blue lights combined together.

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When Two RGB Colours are Equal

In the following chart two out of three of the RGB (red-green-blue) hexadecimal numbers are the same. I have created three different versions of this chart simply by rearranging the colours.

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When the Three RGB Values are Different

In the following chart all three of the RGB (red-green-blue) hexadecimal numbers are different. I have created two different versions of this chart simply by rearranging the colours.

Were your eyes tricked into seeing three dimensions when looking at any of the above colour charts?