Colours in Illustrator and in browsers appear different

[pmcm]

Hi,
I'm putting together web pages in illustrator and assigning the background a specific colour. Thing is, this colour (250000) appears completely different in safari/explorer etc. Its nothing like the original illustrator artwork. Is it a question of adjusting the colour settings somewhere? or calibrating the monitor perhaps?
Any suggestions appreciated
P.

 

[BabyJeffy]

Certainly you would benefit from calibrating the monitors. Are you comparing the original artwork (from illustrator) on the same monitor as the browser that is being used? If you have something printed out... and you are comparing from that... then you asking for trouble (you would need to calibrate monitors and printers then).

Take a screen snap of the site in Safari (say) and then use something like Photoshop to test the actual colour. If it shows as #250000 then the problem is merely monitor calibration.

Remember that you can't calibrate the monitors of your target userbase... and they will have every extreme imaginable.

Cheers,
Jeff

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What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

A lot of computers have different colour profiles, yes. Also, LCD screens tend to show different colours to CRT screens.

One shade of green on my Dell laptop looks totally different than the same colour on my Toshiba laptops... and different again on Intel iMac or Mac G5 laptop.

You cannot expect any colour you choose to look identical on any system. If you're not a professional with a totally calibrated, expensive screen, the best you can do is make sure you choose all your colours on the same system.

Hope this helps,
Dan

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[Foamcow]

How is the Illustrator document set up? Is the document mode RGB or CMYK?

Check under File -> Document Colour mode.

My guess is that it's CMYK whereas your Hex colours will be conversions of RGB values.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
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[skiflyer]

Remember, you only have 216 cross platform "web safe" colors... the rest are going to be interprted slightly differently by different clients.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_colors.asp

 

[BabyJeffy]

... the rest are going to be interprted slightly differently by different clients

My immediate thoughts were to check that link you referred to. I have never experienced different browsers showing hex values (outside of the 216) differently. I test this across browsers on the same machine (of course) and use emmulation to get other operating systems if I need to.

We are not sure how important this is now, since more and more computers are equipped with the ability to display millions of different colors, but the choice is left to you.

They aren't sure... but I would say that in my personal experience using browsers on MacOS and Windows, when you specify a hex value colour it will render the same across all browsers.

Of course... this assumes the user is able to display the colour depth in the first place.

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

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http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[Foamcow]

I would concur with Jeff there.

The 216 colour palette was more to do with the fact that computers (at the time) generally only displayed a max of 256 colours. Some were used by system and were mapped differently between Windows and the Mac System 6/7. The 216 colour "web safe" palette were the same on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Basically you could make something blue and it would be blue wherever you viewed it (unless you only had a mono monitor ;-) )

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[skiflyer]

I agree too... it's a matter of guarantees though... and here's where I've found it useful in my life... if you display a hex value, and then have it line up with an image that photoshop claims is of the same hex value, those 213 or so tend to match up, whereas many colors outside that palette don't always... perhaps that's just anecdotal though.