Color Primer

Most paint programs use six fields for choosing colors, these fields all use the numbers 0 - 255 as values. The six fields are:

1. R - Red
2. G - Green
3. B - Blue
4. H - Hue
5. S - Saturation
6. L - Light

The first three fields are red, green and blue. Computer monitors show colors by mixing these three colors of light in different amounts. RBG values are sometimes displayed as just numbers. For example, 255,0,0 means red = 255, green = 0, and blue = 0. Turning RGB all the down up to 0,0,0 produces black, 255,255,255 produces white.

Hue is the name of the color itself. In paint programs, the name is actually a number. Here is a table of the six primary and secondary hues and there values:

Hue	Name	Color
255	Red
43	Yellow
85	Green
127	Cyan
169	Blue
212	Magenta

Secondary hues are made my mixing two primary colors together:

R + G = Y
G + B = C
B + R = M

Saturation is the amount of color in a hue. Low saturation produces a grayish hue, high produces more intense colors. The following table shows red in six steps of saturation:

Saturation	Color
0
51
102
153
204
255

Light is the amount of black or white in a color. A low value produces a dark color, a high value produces a light one. The following table shows red in six stages of lightness:

Light	Color
0
51
102
153
204
255

A value of 0 will always produce black, 255 will always produce white.

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