I'm stuck... Can't get my greys to match.

I'm trying to make some photo frames that blend in to a web page that has an RGB background color of 66/66/66. (a medium grey)

So.. I thought I'd start in photoshop CS3 making a image file that is precisely that color...
- File New, then color mode RGB 16bit, color profile sRBG IEC6196-2.1
- set paint color to RGB 66/66/66
- use the paint bucket to fill the canvas. Voila!

At this point, my Photoshop CS3 color info palate shows that my colors are 66/66/66. Perfect!

So I save it to JPG, upload to the server, drop it onto the web page, and my image should exactly match the 66/66/66 html background color, right? Wrong. It's not even close.

See for yourself: http://ronhiner.com/opf/50test.html

In theory, the only thing that should be visible on that page is the grey background color, and the text. You should not be able to see where the edge of the image is. The image has become a dark grey.

Macs have a spiffy thing called a digital color meter... drag the pointer anywhere on your screen and it tells you the exact color formula for that point. Well, my browser-rendered image that should be a pure 66/66/66 measures 42/42/42 with that tool. When I point the color meter to my image in photoshop, as rendered in photoshop, I get 45/46/45. I don't get that one either.

Obviously, I'm failing to understand something here. I think I have the color profile right... sRGB all the way. I tested in Safari and Firefox 2.x.. Safari (I think) is color managed, and the profile is embedded anyway, so I should be at least pretty close.

So... I guess I have two questions...

1) What am I missing here?
2) How do I make a simple background JPEG image that matches a known HTML color?

Thanks in advance!

Ron

ron_hiner said:

...

1) What am I missing here?
2) How do I make a simple background JPEG image that matches a known HTML color?

Thanks in advance!

Ron

Click to expand...

Hi Ron,

ROTFL LOL here
The web colour #666666 is a hexadecimal number, which is equivalent to RGB 102,102,102

The RGB 66,66,66 is equivalent to #424242


Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Hi, Ron,

ron_hiner said:

. Safari (I think) is color managed, and the profile is embedded anyway, so I should be at least pretty close.

So... I guess I have two questions...

1) What am I missing here?

Dunno. Obviously something happened on the way to the Web page!

I do know that when I compose a Web page (here) with Front Page and place an image, I have the option to tamper with its brightness and contrast.

I don't know how your Web page was composed and if the tool offers that capability. Maybe it does, and maybe some type of tampering is the default.

2) How do I make a simple background JPEG image that matches a known HTML color?

Just like you did. Now how you get that to survive the journey is another question, evidently.

Click to expand...

Cem -- doh! I was hoping it would be something simple. My fear was having to read a few hundred pages on color theory. Thank you thank you!

Doug... stick around... you can learn with me! <G> I don't use Front page... I code HTML by hand or in Dreamweaver or Eclipse. These tools don't mess with images. The first thing I do when doing problem analysis like this is to strip all the irrelevant details until there is nothing left to strip. In this case, the original problems showed up in a flash rendering engine on Sidewelder.com... it was't until I coded an html page and a simple jpg image that I was alble to rule out both flash and sitewelder as components of the problem. But my fundamental understanding of CM, such as it is, says that if you get the profiles right, the images should survive the journey to any calibrated platform that can read the profile.

ron_hiner said:

Cem -- doh! I was hoping it would be something simple. My fear was having to read a few hundred pages on color theory. Thank you thank you! ...

Click to expand...

Hi Ron,

Glad that I could help. It is something pretty easy to overlook really, it could have happened to anyone ;-)

Hi, Cem,

Cem_Usakligil said:

Hi Ron,

ROTFL LOL here
The web colour #666666 is a hexadecimal number, which is equivalent to RGB 102,102,102

The RGB 66,66,66 is equivalent to #424242

Well, Duh! Nice catch!

Best regards,

Doug

Click to expand...

The web colour #666666 is a hexadecimal number, which is equivalent to RGB 102,102,102

Click to expand...

Firefox has an add-on called ColorZilla, which makes it very easy to discover that sort of thing.

Regards,

Stuart