FF0000
FF0033
FF3300
FF3333
Sat, 30 Jan 1999
Dear Webmasters and Designers,
Thanks very much for the careful responses to this survey from the Webdesign-L and VisiBone mailing lists. Here are the results, displayed somewhat crudely by operating system, which seemed about the only way to differentiate answers that mattered. I don't know if brands mean much any more (e.g., as heard on public radio, "Have you driven a Volvo lately?") but here are the monitors represented, almost as many brands as respondents:
Here is the original question, reworded slightly so the answer tallies make sense: "Do these four reds appear different to you? If they don't, you'll see one wide red rectangle. If they do, you'll see four tall red rectangles up against one another."
| R FF0000 |
RRP FF0033 |
RRO FF3300 |
LHR FF3333 |
|
|
|
|
| Obviously: | Mac Mac Mac Mac NT Win95 Win98 |
| Subtly: | Mac Mac |
| Barely: | NT Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win98 Win98 Win98 |
| Not at all: | NT NT NT Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win98 |
How about these four greens:
| G 00FF00 |
GGT 00FF33 |
GGS 33FF00 |
LHG 33FF33 |
|
|
|
|
| Obviously: | |
| Subtly: | Mac |
| Barely: | Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac NT Win95 Win95 Win98 |
| Not at all: | NT NT NT NT Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win98 Win98 Win98 Win98 |
Or these four blues:
| B 0000FF |
BBA 0033FF |
BBV 3300FF |
LHB 3333FF |
|
|
|
|
| Obviously: | Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac NT Win95 Win98 |
| Subtly: | Mac Win95 Win95 Win98 Win98 |
| Barely: | NT Win95 Win98 |
| Not at all: | NT NT NT Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win95 Win98 |
And how about all these eight "blacks":
| K 000000 |
OWR 330000 |
OWY 333300 |
OWG 003300 |
OWC 003333 |
OWB 000033 |
OWM 330033 |
OG 333333 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Obviously: | Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac Mac NT NT NT Win95 Win95 Win95 Win98 Win98 Win98 |
| Subtly: | Win95 Win95 Win95 Win98 Win98 |
| Barely: | NT Win95 |
| Not at all: | NT Win95 Win95 |
For contrast, the following four shades of red should be obviously different to everybody:
| LHR FF3333 |
LRP FF3366 |
LRO FF6633 |
LFR FF6666 |
|
|
|
|
Clearly, Mac's tend to do a better job than PC's. No surprises there. But Mac's are not perfect either. See the greens: nobody reported they could see obvious distinctions among all of them.
One technical point on the differences between the answers in red, green and blue, and how it's easy to draw the precisely wrong conclusions. Note that the greens are much more likely to appear identical than reds or blues. That's not a crime in green representation, it's in red and blue. Notice that the green samples differ only in their red and blue values -- the greens all use a green value of FF and red and blue values of 00 or 33. Several reported that within a set of four rectangles, some shades appeared identical while others did not. Based on all of this I conclude:
Green levels of 00 versus 33 are the most distinguishable by far
Red less so
Blue least of all
I tend to believe this distinction only represents eyeball physics, and that the crimes somewhere in the driver/monitor system are uniform across the three colors.
| Summary Now there are many aspects to this survey and the conclusions that would make a statistician blanche in horror. The sampling is from a unique group, with voluntary participation to boot. The questions and answers are terribly subjective. Maybe some big magazine with a big budget can do it "right" with representative samples and sensitive color test equipment. I'm certainly not able or willing. But here's a little data and here's where I think it points. It's apparent there is some seriously widespread nonlinearity on the way from the numbers to the eyeballs among the low (dim) values in the 216 color web-safe palette. The results of this survey imply that choosing between 00 and 33 for RGB color codes will make a less than obvious difference for 70% of the people who view them. For 40%, there will be no difference at all. I still don't have anything in the way of an explanation for this bizarre state of affairs. I'm sure there's an engineer or two somewhere who's responsible. If anyone has clues, please let me know. When I design a web site I certainly can't afford to ignore a random 40% of the users. Until monitor technology is much more advanced, or unless the audience is anything other than captive and homogenous, I suggest we're in a disappointing situation: We really only have 125 colors to choose from. |
The 1-3-letter codes are the VisiBone Anglo-Centric Color Code (VACCC). I made them up for web palette colors. To compare other colors, feel free to use the online color lab.
-- Bob Stein
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