KDKA Morning Show: Choosing and Converting Color and Cool Text

This morning with Larry Richert, I told you that you can change a color on your web page or graphic by including a color code in your page design.  Problem is that many people don't know how to find out the code for the color to place in the "tag".  Here's how:

First, you need to know that the color code on a web page is called a hex code, and consists of 6 digits - a combination of letters and numbers.  (Black is 000000.  White is FFFFFF.  Red is FF0000.  The gray in the background of this page is EFEEEE.  You get the idea.)

There are several ways to find the code for the color you want.  Some graphics packages allow you to use the eye dropper tool to select a color, which will determine the amount of red-green-blue (RGB) components in it.  (ex: Yellow is 255=red, 255=green and 128=blue) Then, you can use a web tool to convert the RGB color code to the hex code you need. 

If you want to use Microsoft Paint (a standard part of Windows) to find the RGB, open MS-Paint ([Start] --> [Programs] or [All Programs] --> [Accessories] --> [Paint]).

Then, in Paint, select [Colors], [Edit Colors...], then [Define Custom Colors>>].

Simply click anywhere on the color grid to select a color.  This will show you the RGB components.  If you want, you can also manually edit the numbers in each RGB setting to come up with that perfect color.

Now, write down those RGB values.

Go to Hex/RGB Converter.  Type your RBG values into the proper fields.  Click [Dec -> Hex].  This shows you the value you need in your web page.

Flaming Text

You can get some very interesting buttons, graphics, text and components to use on your web page at Flaming Text.  Don't go overboard when you make your selections.