Giugly01 Loc: Woodstock, NY

Brilliant responses, everyone

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

That is the hexadecimal code for a shade of gray.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

Seriously! It's the basis of all computer color. Pick up a simple book on web programming and look there on how to specify colors beyond the standard 8 or so that can be reference by name. There is no need to go further than that.

christofras Loc: Gold Coast Australia

So who goes to the top of the class!!

blackest Loc: Ireland

well how many different reds blues and greens can you see? more than 2 levels of red or 4 or 8 ? well some clever people figured out 256 levels was more than we can see in red green or blue. our eyes are more sensitive to some colours than others but we can't see any colour in more than 256 levels
it could be just 200 but 256 is useful. computers work with bytes groups of 8 bits and counting in binary is just like decimal with less digits 2 to be exact so 0, 1 , 1 0, 11 is the same as 0, 1,2, 3 in decimal. binary numbers get very long and hard to see the value of for us. so we need a shorthand and hexadecimal does that its a base 16 number system and goes 0123456789ABCDEF we use A-F because we havent symbols for those higher digits and we also know that B is higher than A but less than C

a single hex digit is enough to hold 4 binary digits from 0000 to 1111
a byte is 8 bits so two hex digits can represent 00000000 to 11111111
in binary, in decimal thats 0 - 255 that gets hard to convert to binary
but
0000 0
0001 1
....
1111 F
is fairly easy

F110 is 1111 0001 0001 0000 in binary

you just group the binary into groups of 4. (F110 is a 16 bit number or 2 bytes).
any way to write a number to represent any colour we can see can be done with 00,00,00 to ff,ff,ff. the first pair says how much red the next how much green and the next how much blue. so 00 66 00 s going to be some shade of green... 66 66 66 is a gray as no colour dominates 66 66 99 would be a bluey gray. thats another problem we don't have 24 million names for colours so these numbers are the best we can do.

Computer generally doesnt care if a colour is written as a decimal value or a hex value as both get converted to binary but if i write 66, 66, 66. as a colour value you don't know if that is in hexadecimal or decimal this number is higher in hex than in decimal a different colour depending on which base is being used. so hex is used as a rule to write colour values.

to finish on a question what value is 18% gray?

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

The top? I thought that this was a race to the bottom! :-D :?

christofras Loc: Gold Coast Australia

It is all good for those who are colour blind to some degree, as correct colour can be achieved using a set of numbers. I guess it also means that having a monitor correctly calibrated,is less important.

bill raymont Loc: Canton,Ohio,USA

Clif, pardon the pun, but you really hit the nail right on the head !! What a GREAT response to all that b.s. Bill R

blackest Loc: Ireland

While you don't need to know any metallurgy to use a hammer it sure is handy that someone knew some when they designed hammer and nails.

Why not use a hammer made of lead or glass?

Lets say I send you to the hardware store to buy me some nails to hammer, what size nails are you going to bring back?

marvk

CC is hexadecimal notation for 204. Each place has values 0 to 15 C is 12. The number is therefore 12 times 16 plus 16 or 204. The color notation is two hex digits for each color.
Probably I've just confused you more than helping you.

Binary 1100
Decimal 12
Hexadecimal C

Ron
Just a slight correction on a subject that is complex enough.... CC should be 12x16 +12= 204.....