Tweak tweak tweak

[vettecat]

Finally found a good hex color chart and modified my journal - whee! I've been wanting to do that since I set it up... the red in particular was annoying me. Still don't quite understand the logic behind the codes, but it's a start. (Usually the first thing I do with a new computer is customize the desktop pallette - once I custom-mixed all the colors to match my furniture. Yes, I know I'm sick.) I may tweak it a bit more later but I feel much better now. However, in the process I've somehow gone from "running early" to "running late," so I'd better go get a few things done. Let me know what you think of the new colors! :-)

Comments

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

The colors look good! I spent a whole afternoon setting up a journal color scheme to match my default userpic (shown here), so I can relate. :-)

P.S.: Hi!

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much! I really like your color scheme... I have to work on mine further when I have more time. Where did you get the codes? The best page I've found so far only has 750 or so colors on it, which is a little frustrating. I'd rather mix my own, but I haven't figured out the logic behind the hex codes yet.

Hi to you, too! :-)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Where did you get the codes?

You know, it's taken me a sec to remember how I *did* come up with the codes... but it was like this: This userpic was originally b/w, and I had sepia-toned it in Photoshop previously. When I wanted to work up a color scheme around that photo, I opened it back up in Photoshop and used the eyedropper tool to pick out some pixels of contrasting shades that were already present in the photo (this is a trick from one of the design mags I subscribe to). I made up a palette with 7-8 squares of single colors, light to dark, so I could see how they related to each other in larger samples. Then, the eyedropper tool also handily gave me the RGB codes for each color, so I could plug different combinations out of that palette into the journal stylesheet and see how they came out until I got something I was happy with.

... Wow, do I feel geeky now. :-}

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK... so you had the software break down the colors for you. That makes sense. I'm used to figuring out proportions and specifying the values (though I mostly work with a CMYK system); my question is more how to put those values into a format the LJ form will accept. If it's using RGB, do you just give it a string of numbers (e.g. 804060)? Or do you put in commas (e.g. 80,40,60)? Or add in letters (e.g. R80G40B60)?...

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

The color settings (as you know) go in the Custom Colors section on the Modify Journal page: http://www.livejournal.com/modify.bml

It specs RGB colors in standard HTML syntax, which is six digits prefixed by a # sign. The digit pairs are the hex codes for the desired levels of red, green, and blue, in that order.

The available hex range for each color is from 00 to FF (or, for those of us unused to thinking in hexadecimal, 0 to 255, yielding 256 possible levels). So #FF0000 is pure red, #00FF00 pure green (at least, of the shade that the "green" pixels in your monitor produce), and #0000FF pure blue. #000000 is pure black (none of the pixels are lit up) and #FFFFFF is pure white (all of the pixels are lit at 100%, producing the maximum available level of white light). Adjusting the combinations up or down produces all the other available visible shades on your monitor.

Of course there's lots more info around on the RBG color space. :-)

*geek geek geek*

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Aha! That makes much more sense - thanks! Now all I need to know is how to turn RGB values into hex codes... (puppy dog eyes)

(And, great article! I couldn't find any reference on that site for converting to hex, though.)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Hee. :-) I must have been able to get the hex codes directly from Photoshop when I was doing it. But Googling hexadecimal converter found me, for instance, this one. Enjoy!

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Ooooooh... a toy! I probably shouldn't start playing with it now, but I will definitely try it out sometime soon... this will be fun. (cackle)