Phamalot's Blog: Color Box

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Color Box

Today, I got to play with a color box. "What is a color box?" You ask. This is a color box. http://cybercollege.com/colors/tabbedcolorbox.html

At that link, you get to merge different types of colors to make new colors. We can mix the original shades of light- RGB (Red, Green, and Blue), pigments (CMYK- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and mix them all to get K, Black.) Then, we could 'print' things, to show how real publishers control the color in their articles and to show what happens if the colors used are unbalanced.

First, I went to the Mixing Light tab. Then, I combined colors to get the following:
1 Cyan = Blue + Green
2 Magenta = Red + Blue
3 White = Blue + Green + Red
4 Yellow = Green + Red
5 Black = No colors

Then, I went to the Mixing Pigments tab. I combined pigments to get the following:
1 Red = Yellow + Magenta
2 Blue = Cyan + Magenta
3 White = No colors
4 Green = Cyan + Yellow
5 Black = Cyan + Yellow + Magenta

(Note: The first three colors are the ones we were told to find; the rest are just for reference later on.)

Finally, I went to the 'Color Printing' tab and changed the colors to find out how a printer works.
When Yellow was slowly tuned down (This printer just used CMY), the black turned slowly from black to a shade of purple and then blue. With no yellow at all, there's a brighter shade of blue- probably something like a 'royal blue' color.

As Cyan was turned down, the black combination turned to a shade of dark brown, then brown, then a dark red, and finally, with no cyan, yellow and magenta made a bright red color.

That was all we were told to do, but I turned down Magenta to see what happened anyway. The yellow and the cyan did pretty much what I expected, making a dark and then light shade of green.

For the rest of the period, I spent my time looking at photoshop tutorials. I can't wait to start here, since I know that photoshop is essential for my animation class as well, for designing templates. It's definitely going to be a useful thing to know how to do.

(My photoshopped Knight)