Color Matters - Color and Computers

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Computer Color Matters

(Revised, June 2006)

These images represent a range of what any given image may look like to someone viewing this web page today. Since a web site distributes images to many different types of computers and monitors, an image that looks good on one system might look completely different on another. The image at the far left is true to the real colors, the second one from the left represents a very limited color palette, the third from the left is a much lighter version of the first one, and the last image on the right represents a very bad color distortion.

Does true color matter?

Consider this: If you visit a clothing store on the Web and see a blue shirt, you are out of luck if you think that the shirt is really that shade of blue. And if you're visiting a museum on the Web to view Matisse's paintings, or researching skin diseases, or analyzing a satellite weather photo, you may not be seeing the correct colors and you may be getting incorrect information.

How Computers See Color

The following components work together to create color on your computer:

1. The computer hardware on the motherboard
In the simplest terms, deep inside your computer is a "brain." It may or may not be able to see and recreate accurate colors.

2. Graphic cards or video cards/boards
You may have a graphic card or video card/board installed. If so, this helps your computer to see better colors and more colors. (Note: This is built into all Macintosh computers.)

3. Your monitor
Cheap monitors deliver terrible color. You get what you pay for. If you have an old monitor or a PC monitor that cost less than $200 (US), you probably have very little color accuracy.

The colors generated on your monitor are also affected by anti-glare screens and devices that lower the radiant emissions. These will darken the actual color and may cast a grey haze over the images you see. A better solution is placing your monitor away from glare sources. This will give you better color and optimum visual conditions. Regarding electromagnetic field emissions, it is represented that good monitors are properly shielded and that emissions are restrained to the sides and back. The validity of these reports is subject to further questioning.

To sum it up, the monitor can be the major cause of good or bad color ... or the monitor can be part of the combination of several components that creates good or bad color. In other words, if you have a good video card, good operating system software, and good application software, a bad monitor can still create inaccurate colors. And even if you have a fantastic monitor, the other components can still create bad colors. So you're looking at a case-by-case kind of situation.

4. The web browser (Firefox, Explorer, Safari etc.)
Consider the browser to be the messenger who delivers the colored graphics to your computer.

At the present time, most web browsers do not support graphic file formats that contain essential information about color (such as PNG and JPEG 2000). The current standard is the 216 web-safe color palette which is based on the colors that are known to exist in the color vocabulary of all computers (from 8 bit and up). Link to see the 216 Color Palette.

*** For detailed information on these 4 components, see Tips and Links

About the Colors in Images

The images you see on the Web are either GIF or JPEG images. In simple terms, "GIF" and "JPEG" refer to the computer language that is at work within graphic images. It can be compared to how some people speak Mandarin, some speak French and some speak English. Some graphic images speak GIF, some speak JPEG, some speak TIFF, some speak EPS, etc.

These GIF or a JPEG images can be viewed by all "brands" of computers, PCs, Macintosh, and Unix. They also contains color information and this information is based on RGB, on how much (R) red (G) green and (B) blue is in the image.

Here's some background on RGB color theory: Computers create colors based on a special set of 3 primary colors: red, green, and blue. So does your television. If you go up close to your TV, (put your eye right on top of the screen) you will see little dots of red green and blue. In computers and television, light transmissions are creating the color. Red and green mix to create yellow. See the illustrations below.

RGB Primaries and Secondaries

This is called "Additive Color" and is completely different from how colors are mixed in the tangible world of paints and pigments. When we mix red and green paint, we get muddy browns. This is "Subtractive Color" and is based on the primaries, red, yellow, and blue (or red-based/magenta, yellow-based/yellow, blue-based/cyan). We have a special page at Color Matters which explains more about this. Link to Color Systems.

Let's take a look at the color below and analyze the processes it passed through before it reached your eyes.

a warm color

First, the color was created in Adobe Photoshop. The recipe for the color you see is: red=204, green=102, blue=102. The true color could be called a muted coral or salmon.

Here's the path that the graphic took to get to you:

1. The image was placed in an html script (web page) that can be read by all Web browsers. This script was sent to the Color Matters' web server computer in Honolulu, Hawaii.

2. Your Web browser software connected your computer to our server and brought the image into your computer. The colors in this gif image passed through the browser and brought this information into your computer operating system.

3. The colors in the image passed through your operating system hardware. If you have a graphic card or video card it may have joined in to interpret the color.

4. Your monitor took all the information and sent it to your eyes.

In conclusion, remember that different computers do different things, many "systems" have different configurations of all of the above things, and browsers used to view the World Wide Web are part of the overall picture.

Click here.

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