What is RGB?

RGB is abbreviation for Red, Green and Blue, the colors of ray, from which the colors on TV and computer screens are produced. To understand RGB better, we need to know the basics of color creation for displays.

What Does RGB Stand For?

Each monitor's display is made of pixels and each is composed of three subpixels, tiny dots, which have one of three possible colors: red, green or blue. The value of each dot can be defined with a number between 0 and 255 and the end result is a combination of all three.

If we want, for instance, represent color orange, the value would be (255, 165, 0), what gives the maximum (255) value of Red colored ray, approximately half (165) value of Green and minimum (0) of Blue. 

From very close, a display where all the values were at max, would look like this:

RGB and HEX
While RGB standard looks pretty straightforward, computers prefer communication to hexadecimal codes, where only two digits are needed for each value. For this reason, a simple conversion is needed and to refresh some memories from school, we should note hexadecimal code uses A instead of 10 (in decimal), B for 11, C for 12, D for 13, E for 14 and F for 15.

Color orange would be written as FFA500. As you notice, we didn't only simplify the writing with a fixed number of used digits (RGB can use 1, 2 or three digits, depending on the value, for each ray), but we don't need brackets anymore. Hexadecimal (or HEX) code is today's most popular standard in the world of computers and each web designer is very likely closely related to it.

If for any reason, you need a conversion between RGB and HEX codes, you can use one of many free web tools, like next:

http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/color/rgb-to-hex.htm

or vice versa:

http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/color/hex-to-rgb.htm

There are also many similar tools for other useful uses. One of my favorites can find a HEX value of any color from any image, no matter if we are dealing with a picture on the web or the graphic file on one's desktop computer.

You can find this tool here:

https://html-color-codes.info/colors-from-image/

While all these info gives an impression of full control, we should never forget we are actually dealing with optical illusion. Graphic displays are tailored to human eyes, where three types of receptors (color-sensitive cells) are used and each human being has at least slightly different receptors (sometimes called cones), what gives plenty of possibilities for confusion.

One such fact is the difference between the perception of colors for women and men. Women are in general much better in recognition of color hues, tints, and shades, while men have better so-called peripheral sight.

Well, all these details can be addressed at one or more of next posts. By for now.