Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Color Blenders

The problem with the web palette is that it has only 216 colors to choose from (and they probably wouldn’t be your first choices). If you are bored with your color options, you may want to try a color blender. Color blenders approximate any RGB color by mixing two colors from the web palette in a tiny checkerboard pattern. You can use these “hybrid colors” to fill areas of graphics or to create a background tile.

Color blenders all work about the same way. Simply select an RGB color (such as from an image using an eyedropper tool) and the blender converts it to a 2 × 2-pixel tile made up of two web-safe colors. The hybrid color is then available as a fill color to be applied to a selected object or marquee selection.

The Pros and Cons of Color Blenders

No technology is either all good or all bad, so let’s look at the ups and downs of color blenders:

Advantages

• Color blenders allow you to choose colors off the beaten path of the 216-color web-safe palette, yet still be certain they will look the same on 24- and 8-bit monitors.

Disadvantages

• The controlled dither adds to the file size if used as a fill for large areas of the graphic, because it interferes with the GIF’s LZW compression.

• It is more difficult to get inline images to blend seamlessly over a background tiled with a hybrid color. For instance, an image with a hybrid blue background may not line up correctly with the same hybrid blue in the browser background. For best results, create the original image ...