The opposite is also true: if the three numbers are not equal, the resulting color is not neutral. Second observation : When all three of R, G and B are equal, we get a neutral color: white, grey or black. I formulate them here as observations.įirst observation : In the RGB way of color coding, the higher the numbers, the lighter the corresponding color. See Figure 2.īy now, we can identify two rules. Similarly, RGB = 20,20,20 is a very dark grey, and RGB = 200,200,200 is a light grey. It gets white, doesn't it? Next, set each to 128 and click again. The lower the RGB's, the darker the color. The higher the RGB values, the lighter the color. Remember that we are coding light, not ink or paint or something like that.
Given three figures between 0 and 255, assign one to R, one to G and one to B, and you have defined a color.įor these three figures, 0 means: nothing, 255 means: the maximum amount. That value can be anything between 0 and 255. The Color panel allows a user to pick one color by entering a value for each of the R, G and B components. This is the goal of this article: understand the coding of colors. If I have a pixel that is white in my photograph, how is it coded internally? Black? And what about orange, dark olive green, lilac, etc.? These colors are somehow encoded as numbers. That may be a real color, but it may also be white, black or some shade of grey (which I consider colors too). A computer needs numbers or it cannot store, process and show any image.Ī digital photograph consists of pixels, a pixel being a colored dot, the smallest element of the image. We cannot store light waves on a computer's hard disk, let alone a human perception. Or even better: a color is a perception, something that only exists in humans’ minds. A color is a property of light, a wavelength, or a mix of wavelengths. Computer? Yes, we are talking about digital photographs only.Ī digital image, as it comes out of a digital camera or a scanner, can be stored on the hard disk of your computer, processed, enhanced, retouched for whatever reason, and sent to a printer.Īnd here is the point: a computer cannot store colors the way we see them. Numbering is necessary because it's the only way a computer is able to store a color. What's that, "Color Coding"? Why do colors have to be coded? The coding refers to numbering.
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