• HueHue is somewhat synonymous to what we usually refer to as "colors". Red, green, blue, yellow, and orange are a few examples of different hues. The different hues have different wavelenghts in the spectrum.

• ValueThe value is a measurement of the brightness of a color. The brighter a color is, the higher is its value and the more light it emits. For instance, a vivid yellow is brighter than dark blue, therefore its value is higher than that of the blue. A good way to see the difference in the values of colous is to look at the corresponding greyscale version.

• SaturationSaturation can also be called a color's intensity. It is a measurement of how different from pure grey the color is. Saturation is not really a matter of light and dark, but rather how pale or strong the color is. The saturation of a color is not constant, but it varies depending on the surroundings and what light the color is seen in.

• Tint and shadeThese are terms to describe how a color varies from its original hue. If white is added, the lighter version of the color is called a tint of the color. On the other hand, if black is added the, darker version of the color is called a shade of the color.

Hue

tint

shade

saturation

by brightness by saturation

• What are web-safe colours?Web-safe colours are somewhat of a remainder from the early years of the web, back when a normal screen could only display 256 colours. Back then, there was a need to worry about consistency in how browsers displayed the colours. The system is made up of some 40 colours, for menus and such, and the remaining 216 colours could be used to display the actual web pages. Now, 216 colours might sound like quite a bit, but the problem is that no aesthetic considerations were made when these colours were decided, but rather they are based solely on mathematical formulas. To be more exact, the web-safe colours are what you get when you use 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% of the three different primary colours, and then mix these in every possible combination.

X0.5

a color wheel based on shades

indecisive color strategy

A lack of variety in saturation

A Triad color scheme that does not quite do it

Can you get any less sophisticated?

117, 173, 108

234, 127, 91

EVA circa 1995: contrasting tints are harsh on the eyes

Current EVA website. Can you further improve upon this?

0, 132, 57

this is a shade of the original color

Color Tools on the Web:

Quick Color toolshttp://www.mundidesign.com/webct/webct.html

Pallete Generatorhttp://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html

Color Scheme Generatorhttp://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme/index-en.html