A Complete Guide to Web Design

308 Chapter 17 – Designing Graphics with the Web Palette

Designing with Web-Safe Colors

Web Design in a Nutshell, eMatter Edition

Adobe Illustrator 7.0

Version 7.0 of Adobe Illustrator introduces the ability to work within the RGB

color space (instead of being limited to CMYK as in previous versions), so

you can color your graphics and even export them directly to GIF format. To

select colors from the 216 web-safe colors, select WindowsÝSwatch Libraries

Ý Web.

Macromedia Freehand 7.0 and higher

You can select colors from the Websafe Color Library, under Options on the

Color Palette. Colors appear with their decimal and hexadecimal RGB values.

Macromedia Director 5.0 and higher

You can find the Web Palette under the Xtras pull-down menu. Look for the

palette called “Netscape.”

Macintosh System OS8

MacOS8 comes with an HTML Color Picker in addition to the standard Color

Picker. This tool makes selecting web-safe colors extremely easy via slider

bars that snap into place at the safe color values. It also translates the colors

into the hexadecimal values that HTML and browsers understand. (See

Chapter 5 for more information on hexadecimal numbering.)

Pantone ColorWeb Pro

ColorWeb Pro is a Mac-only product that enables designers to select web-safe

colors via an addition to the Macintosh Color Picker. It also has printed

swatch books that provide Pantone color equivalents for the Web Palette

when you need to coordinate your web page with a printed piece. Another

swatch book lists traditional Pantone ink colors, but lists their digital equiva-

lents in decimal and hexadecimal RGB values.

Color Look-Up Tables (CLUT Files)

Photoshop and some other graphics tools save palettes in files called CLUTs (Color

Look-Up Table). To make the Web Palette available in the Swatches palette, you

need to load the appropriate Web CLUT file using the Load Swatches... or Replace

Swatches... function (in Photoshop) or some equivalent command.

Creating a CLUT file in Photoshop 4.0

Photoshop 5.0 ships with the Web Safe Colors CLUT file in its Color Palettes

folder, however, Photoshop 4.0 does not. If you are using version 4.0, it’s easy

enough to create one as follows:

1. Convert any RGB image to Indexed Color.


2. In the Indexed Color dialog, select Web from the Palette pop-up menu. Click
   OK.


3. Select ImageÝModeÝColor Table. Although the Table pop-up lists Custom
   as the current option, the table itself contains the 216 browser-safe RGB
   values.


4. Click the Save button, and save the color palette. Name it descriptively and
   save it into Photoshop’s Color Palettes folder.