When creating web pages, or designing graphics, you will have to deal with color - even black and white are colors you will need to specify. Generally speaking, you may use RGB Decimal for graphics and RGB Hexadecimal for your web pages.

The RGB Decimal value for Black is 0,0,0 meaning Red=0, Green=0, Blue=0.

The RGB Decimal value for White is 255,255,255 meaning Red=255, Green=255, Blue=255.

Every other color is within this range. The combination for each value of Red, Green, and Blue are different for each one.

The RGB Decimal value for this purple color is 153,0,204 - Red=153, Green=0, Blue=204.

What you can not see, unless you look at the coding which creates this web page, is to make those words appear purple here, the font tag specified a hexadecimal value, which is what most people use when creating web pages.

So if you design a purple graphic, such as the purple bars to the left on the menu of links which were designed in graphic software using an RGB Decimal value of 153,0,204, and you want text on your web page to match, you need to know what the corresponding Hexadecimal equivalent is. If you use the form above, and enter the values of 153,0,204 in the Decimal boxes, you will see the Hexadecimal value for that particular color of purple is 9900CC. With hexadecimal values, the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F are also used with numbers.

The RGB Hexadecimal value for Black is 000000.

The RGB Hexadecimal value for White is FFFFFF.

A small percentage of computer users (which still represents a large amount) are still using monitors where dithering is a major issue. However, there are 216 colors that are considered web safe. You will find these colors by choosing Web Safe Colors on the menu to the left. You may also select Web Color Picker to see these colors rendered on your monitor as a background color. Two hundred and sixteen colors may sound like a lot of choices until you start using them to create graphics. When possible, you may want to use these safe colors, but unless you are targeting viewers to your site who are likely to be using older computers, you probably do not have to worry about this issue.

When designing our web pages, we are likely to choose a web safe color for large areas, such as the blue on this page. However, the pine tree graphic has so many colors in it that this wasn't an issue of concern. If the boxes below look fine to you, one is a web safe color the other is not, then your monitor probably doesn't have a dithering problem to be concerned with. But you never know who will be viewing your web pages nor with what type of computer equipment.