Graphic and Color Description
Alright boys and girls. Now that we are done making our website very basic we will talk a little about
colors and graphics.
There are 3 types of color used in the world of web sites and magazines. CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black ),
RGB ( red, green, blue ), and indexed color.
CMYK is a color model that is best used if it is used with print. Magazines, newspapers, books, etc...
It is considered a reflective color because light bounces off of it and into your eyes. It is much different from color
on a monitor, because on a monitor, light comes directly from its source, through the screen, and directly into your eyes.
Where ever you see a magazine or book with illustrations, know that the color used is CMYK.
RGB is Red, Green, and Blue. Monitors, including TV, video, and computer moniters, all create images on
the screen by emitting red, green, and blue light. They overlap eachother which allows a monitor to show over a million
different colors. RGB is used for web pages, graphics, and everything else that is projected through your monitor.
So, if you ever edit a CMYK scan, then save it in RGB color mode.
Indexed color is a limited selection of colors, called a pallete, of up to 256 colors. It's like the grandson
of RGB color mode. When you convert and image to indexed from RGB, all the colors but a maximum of 256 RGB
colors are deleted. If the image requires a color not in the 256 colors, then the computer will mix colors to give you the closest
it can to the color needed with its limited resources.
The JPEG is a graphic file format. It stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is best used
for pictures or high resolution images with many subtle changes in the color, depth, light, or other gradation of color
or tone. The JPEG is great if you want to upload a picture because, unlike it brother the GIF file, it can
use up to 16.7 million different colors.
The GIF file is specifically designed to be used on the web. GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format.
They are cross-platform files, which means that any computer can read them. The other good thing about them is that
they are compressed files in file size, not dimensions. GIF's use indexed color, which means they are limited to only 256 colors.
They are best used for small pictures and graphics that don't contain to much detail. GIF's can have one of their
colors transparent, so if someone looks at your website they won't see the white border around your
manbearpig drawing. GIF's are also a file type that can be used to create animations.
Now onto Anti-Aliasing. AA is the apparent smoothness of the edge of a graphic. File sizes
of AA'ed GIF's are a little bit larger than those of other GIF's. AA is the coolest thing ever. If you create a graphic
and it has jaggies ( bad edges ) then just hit the AA button in yourimage editor and BOOM!! you have yourself a nice
smoothe image. It is very important if you want your website to look professional and clean,
so make sure you use AA or else.