AU Colors - Hexidecimal/RGB Values

Note: When working with a graphics editing program, such as Adobe^® Photoshop^® or Macromedia^® Fireworks^®, you can use these hexidecimal and RGB color values to achieve a look consistent with the AU official colors.

RGB Color Codes

Confused? RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. You can compose any color by mixing various amounts of those colors. Every color available to a computer can be specified by choosing an RGB set of values. To specify a color, simply select a value between 0 and 255 for R, G, and B. For example, White is specified by (255, 255, 255), while Black is (0, 0, 0). Pure Red would be (255, 0, 0), etc.

What is Hex? Why do I need to convert my RGB values to Hex?

Hex, short for hexadecimal, is simply a base 16 numbering system, so that a three digit number (in this case numbers between 0 and 255) can be expressed as a two digit number. To specify the colors for the text and background of your homepages, you need to enter Hex values which represent the RGB values of the colors you like. Web browsers take these numbers as 6 digit (or 6 place) values, with each 2 digits representing the Red, Green, or Blue values. Hex is a notation which mixes letters and numbers. For example, a green background would be (0, 255, 0) in RGB, and 00FF00 in Hex. Browsers understand Hex.

Maintained by: webops@american.edu
Last Update: November 17, 2006