[thelist] web-safe pallette

[Linda R.]

Ian Feavearyear wrote:
> Does anyone worry about sticking to the web-safe pallette these days? 
> Just curious!

Naw. Use the colors you like but test a lot.

By the way, Web safe doesn't mean that anyone using any browser on any 
Operating System will see those colors in the same way. It means they 
won't see them as dithered.

The Web safe palette was developed for 256 color video display. 8-bit 
and 16-bit color systems share only 8 colors of the Web 216 palette. 
That means the Web 216 color palette is pretty much guaranteed to dither 
or shift on a 16-bit color display.

16 bit, or "High color" was originally developed for artists who work in 
CMYK color space. 16 bits can be evenly divided into 4 bits per 
channel—4 Cyan, 4 Magenta, 4 Yellow, and 4 Key (blacK). RGB is a three 
value color space. 16 bits can’t be evenly divided by 3, so you end up 
with an extra color bit. That’s where things go wonky.

Different display card manufacturers have different ways of dealing with 
that 16th bit. One may assign the orphaned bit to the blue channel, 
making a color look cooler. Another manufacturer may assign bit #16 to 
the red channel, making the same color look warmer. A third display card 
manufacturer might choose to ignore bit 16 altogether. This color shift 
between systems is why the background color of a GIF matches the 
background color of an HTML page on my system but doesn’t match it on 
yours. It's worth noting that LCD screens are less color faithful than 
CRT monitors, especially when viewing the screen a bit off the 
perpendicular. 16-bit color display is a complete madhouse!


-- 
Cheers,
Linda Rathgeber
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Masking and selecting in Fireworks: "PHOTO MAGIC"
http://webdevbiz.com/pwf/photomagic/

Fireworks Visual Effects: "RAZZLE DAZZLE"
http://www.webdevbiz.com/pwf/

Victoriana | http://www.projectseven.com
Team MM Fireworks Volunteer | www.macromedia.com/go/team
----------------------------------------------------------------------