Need advice

[Aaron Johnson]

there are over 16,000,000 colors . in RGB it's 255 * 255 * 255 of " red, green , blue " .
is there a site for seeing which ones look beautiful combined in a 5 to 6 color scheme ?
i wanna test all 16,000,000 colors for designing a blog from scratch .

[Aaron Johnson]

and i know this will take some days for me to accomplish but is there a quicker way , if yes , what is the quickest way to you ? can you tell me how to do it

[tangor]

Start with presence of all color (black), absence of all color (white) and three shades (intensities) of a third color (your choice). Forget 16M colors, the human eye is not the best device for "near color shade/intensity" separations. The one color would be solid (full density) half (half density) shade (quarter density).

Thoughts
Header/logo: White Text on Solid background
Sidebar: White or Black on Half density background
Body: Black text on Shade (or white) background]
H tags: Solid on Shade (or white) background

[Aaron Johnson]

is the color wheel important for this ? if yes how do i use it with what we were talking about earlier ?

[tangor]

example:
h=header background color
s=sidebar background color
b=body background color

hhhhhhhhhh
ssbbbbbbb
ssbbbbbbb
ssbbbbbbb
ssbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbb

[ipco]

If you want to check out 16m colors? You're over thinking it.

Questions you might want to ask yourself are:

What is the focus of my blog?

Based on the industry of my focus, What colors would my audience expect to see?

Can I pick colors from my images to maintain a color flow.

Don't go OTT with the colors, it may detract from the important part of your blog - the content.

[Aaron Johnson]

you get more colors from primary and secondary colors . what do you get more of from color schemes

[Aaron Johnson]

a parrot is red,green, and blue and they look beautiful with colors . how do i learn colors to make my site pretty like that

[Aaron Johnson]

what is the best way to get colors ? is it from pictures , moods, or etc. can you tell what is the way they got their colors from this site <snip>
if you do go for it by checking for good combinations for 16million colors is there a easier way and shoreter way of doing it ?

[edited by: not2easy at 4:33 am (utc) on Apr 8, 2019]
[edit reason] See Charter [/edit]

[tangor]

Read the other site's source code and find their color choices.

[tangor]

Odd thought ... if you are looking for "how to find" ...

Go to your local hardware/home improvement store and look through their paint samples ... they have recommendations for base, contrast, and complementary for just about any shade you can think of.

All this has been worked out over the course of a few CENTURIES. All you have to do is code it in html, a bit of css (style sheet or not) and get busy!

If you want a CRITIQUE of any color choices you have in mind, you have to submit CODE (sans any website information) to get an answer. Otherwise this is questions without direction.

[Aaron Johnson]

what kind of inspiration images do they get their colors for their color palettes , the fansite web designers ?

[not2easy]

I do not think that designers are using some particular images rather than their own color palettes. A client might ask for some image to be used for their colors, in that case the client supplies the images. Most images can contain hundreds of thousands of colors while most sites keep color sets within a set that is manageable. Until you actually try some of these things they may not make any sense.

Where do sets come from? You make them as has been suggested here, several times. It looks as if you are overthinking tasks. An old saying in design is: Keep It Simple, Silly (KISS). That means to learn the basics, then expand your understanding as is needed.

[ipco]

The Inspiration image is usually the main image they are using on their site, possibly in the header section.
You can't take inspiration from just any image, it has to be one you are going to use, obviously.

If you are going to use an image, find one that has an expanse of color.

Find an interesting image, pertaining to the focus of your site, that you can legally use.
There are a lot of sites where you can download images, some free some for a small fee.

To get the colors, use an online color picker to get the color values you want to use. Just do an online search for "pick color from image". There are plenty of sites out there that can help you. This will give you the hex and rgba values that you can use in your css.

Perhaps you don't want to use an image at all, and at this stage you may be better off not.

Whether you use an image or not, you only need two or three colors. Don't go over the top with this. Just look around you, your home, birds and flowers, sunrise in the morning. You'll be surprised at the possible color combinations.

Tangor gave plenty of advice on this you could/should use.

Now its really up to you to try it for yourself. Give it a go, keep at it till something works for you.

[Aaron Johnson]

well do you know the best tool for expanding your understanding of color schemes after learning the basics ? <snip>
do you know of any color wheels that are easy to move along and read ? also if it has its name or hex code in the color wheel

[edited by: not2easy at 12:36 am (utc) on Apr 11, 2019]
[edit reason] Read the Charter [/edit]

[tangor]

The color wheel shows you all the colors. You have to pick a few and code your page to see if they work as desired. Again, there is NOTHING MAGICAL about this. What is pleasing to the eye (or makes sense for the content) is the colors you use.

Some sites like an "autumn" look which means browns, yellow, reds, orange and greys. Others might like "winter" which is whites and blues and grays. Your THEME is based on the SITE CONTENT.

There is no way to generate a winner combination of colors with a website calculator ... only eye, content presentation, and EXPERIENCE can help you there. That and having studied all the EXAMPLES IN PLAIN SIGHT that are on the web. Lacking any kind of code from you we are at an impasse to assist.

Something like (pseudo code, this will NOT run in a browser!)

<html>
<body "tan">
<header "darkbrown" text "white">
text (black on tan)
<sidebar "yellow" text "red" set "right" 25% of screen>
more text (black on tan)
<section "lightbrown" text black>
<footer "darkbrown" text "white">
</body>
</html>

NOTE: these are "ugly" colors ... a very "dark" theme ... and might be what gamers and others like. But we need to see something in code before anyone can say ..."good choice" or "bit odd" or "not enough contrast" or anything else.

[Aaron Johnson]

can you tell me a site that generates color schemes , has a full color wheel , and helps you pick from all selections of the harmonies .

[not2easy]

Adobe has all that: [color.adobe.com...]

[lucy24]

Adobe has all that:

But Adobe thinks it’s so ### smart, they interpolate your preferred language into the URL, as in
example.com/br/create
... and if your preferred language happens to not exist in their system, they don’t simply serve the default or english-language version, but throw a 404 in your face. I finally got there by explicitly requesting /en/ which then redirects to the language-less default--i.e. exactly what I requested in the first place.

Hmph.

[not2easy]

Sorry for that, I went there from a very old bookmark for kuler.com which has been assimilated. The link I posted was where that redirect landed and it had no language /dir/ included. I should have verified it worked as expected. The old kuler site let you design palettes and name them for sharing.

[tangor]

What OP is looking for is a point and click to get colors. A search on Bing for "css color themes generator" revealed many. This one is the easiest:

[quackit.com...]

Sadly, things like this do not advance knowledge and experience and are PRE-DEFINED by some programer's choice of mathematical formulas ... rather than an artist's eye ... so technically correct, but perhaps lacking any human experience.

[tangor]

A client might ask for some image to be used for their colors, in that case the client supplies the images.

Missed this from not2easy first time through this thread.

I have had clients do the same: "I want colors like in this picture".

I reply; "Too many. Hang on a sec..."

I then process the image down to 8 colors, 16 colors, or 32 colors and send those samples back to them with "These colors I can work with for a website." When one is selected for the "scheme" I use a standard color picker and make note of the rgb and hex values and go from there.

You'd be surprised how often a "Wow!" comes back as what "colors" made the image special in the first place are USUALLY more defined in a color subset than the full image. 16 million colors is a construct ... there are only "seven" colors ... anything else is a gradient/combination/intensity of neighboring pixels. When you remove that "clutter" you actually get down to the base colors---and that is what a page designer needs to get started.

[tangor]

Followup...

You can then create css (style sheet) entries for each of the client colors with easy to code/remember names such as
blue1
blue2
blue3

[tangor]

HOW MANY COLORS?

I prefer the "picasso" or "pollard" limited/bold palettes.

Da Vinci or Monet palettes have value, but can become cumbersome in a medium not properly designed for presenting subtle color variations ... but when reduced to basics (4-8-16 colors) the WARMTH of those can be very pleasing.

The other way of looking at website colors is:

How do you like to dress? What color choices do you like to wear in public? Biz, Casual, Garish, Clown, Naked...?

To my experience, both as art nut and coder, sites using more than 8 color codes (colors/shade, text, borders, even margins) either have too much time on their hands, or have no clue how to "dress" in public.

YMMV

[tangor]

INTENSITY

Most folks these days have no concept of "intensity" ... how bright or dark a color tone might be. Why? Everything in their life has color ... but I grew up on black and white photos and tv (yeah, revealing my age).

But I so liked black and white that even when I got color tvs I TURNED OFF THE COLOR to watch IN B&W ... Why? Because the real information in an image is intensity. That is what gives shape, form, and content/meaning to what is being viewed.

COLOR can be a distraction!

While contrast and density are near cousins and function generally in the same way, they are NOT the same. A 25% black is not the same as a black with 25% contrast because ALL values are changed by contrast applications when processed.

A better way to think this is that CONTRAST is the combination of another tone compared to itself. For READING and WEB purposes these should be markedly different from each other, that way the content/meaning of each tone is visible and obvious to the naked eye.

[tangor]

GRADIENTS

Most browsers support gradients these days. All too often they are used incorrectly, usually in headers, footers, or logos.

Test this yourself and you'll see what I mean.

<div with color gradient>
Text Here>
</div>

<div> gradient runs dark to light, top to bottom
Text is same color as gradient

Result, top part of text disappears (this also happens with colors, unless contrasting (opposites on color wheel).

Workaround: Text ALSO has gradient IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION to <div> background. A very cool effect! (See comments on intensity above).

[tangor]

Obviously I am a bit passionate about this ... and opinionated. Please consider that I frequently have internal rants towards coders/site builders without a clue and color choices/contrast fails when I encounter them on the web.

Disclaimer: These days I surf (personally) with high contrast due to aging eyes. I impose my own font/color choices, I deny js of any kind, and so---all that I have commented on in this thread never touches me. I AM AFTER THE CONTENT ... not pretty pictures/schemes. (Though I still enjoy those from time to time on my "regular" system!)

Keep these possibilities in mind as you color/code your pages. A SIGNIFICANT number of the world's web users ARE GETTING OLD, or have special need of ACCESSIBILITY requirements.

KISS! (3 colors/tones and black and white!)

[tangor]

One last note:

If the site is not readable in black and white, Color will only make it worse.

Color CAN and SHOULD mean something! Use it as a separator of content or a call to attention/action. In that regard color can be a best thing since sliced bread!

[NickMNS]

@tangor

This statement:

To my experience, both as art nut and coder, sites using more than 8 color codes (colors/shade, text, borders, even margins) either have too much time on their hands, or have no clue how to "dress" in public.

Reminds of this scene from the Amadeus movie:
[youtube.com...]

Regarding gradients and disappearing text a solution that I find works well is the use text-shadow. Applied correctly it will darken the area around the letters. Obviously, you would only use this for headings and titles.

But this brings up another point that you did not touch on and that is shadows and depth. Shadows can be used to draw attention to elements such as buttons. One can apply a shadow on an element, and user's will immediately and intuitively know that it is clickable, this can be done without the addition of colors. One can also change the shadow slightly on hover and even marginally change the scale to give the illusion that the button is being pressed.

You can achieve a similar effect by changing the tone of elements. For example for tabbed content, the active tab will be lightest in tone, and the inactive tabs will be a shade or two darker. This immediately gives the impression of depth.

[tangor]

Excellent examples of INTENSITY (that is what shadow is). :)

Shadow is a form of black (presented as gray scale) and when overlaid on a color, changes that color's intensity. Didn't forget it, just dealt with it from an artist's view, not a coder. My bad!