- Grey
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For other uses, see Grey (disambiguation)."Achromatic" redirects here. For other uses, see Achromatic (disambiguation).
Grey/Gray 
— Common connotations — depression, boredom, neutrality, undefinedness, old age, contentment and speed 
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet #808080 sRGBB (r, g, b) (128, 128, 128) HSV (h, s, v) (--°, 0%, 50%) Source HTML/CSS[1] B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte) Grey or gray is an achromatic or neutral color.
Complementary colors are defined to mix to grey, either additively or subtractively, and many color models place complements opposite each other in a color wheel. To produce grey in RGB displays, the R, G, and B primary light sources are combined in proportions equal to that of the white point. In four-color printing, greys are produced either by the black channel, or by an approximately equal combination of CMY primaries. Images which consist wholly of neutral colors are called monochrome, black-and-white or greyscale.
The first recorded use of grey as a color name in the English language was in AD 700.[2] Grey is the British spelling, whereas either gray or grey is acceptable American spelling, though gray was also in common usage in the UK until the second half of the 20th century.[3]
Contents
In colour theory
Most grey pigments have a cool or warm cast to them, as the human eye can detect even a minute amount of saturation.[citation needed] Yellow, orange, and red create a "warm grey". Green, blue, and violet create a "cool grey".[4] When there is no cast at all, it is referred to as "neutral grey", "achromatic grey" or simply "grey".
Warm grey Cool grey Mixed with 6% yellow. Mixed with 6% blue. Some extensive colour charts refer to "gray" and "grey" as different colours; "grey" (#D3D3D3) is considerably lighter than "gray" (#808080). Interestingly, only "gray" is recognized as a colour in some browsers. In addition, many people see "grey" as an actual silver-like colour, while seeing "gray" as a range of colours between white and black.[5]
Two colours are called complementary colors if grey is produced when they are combined additively. Grey is its own complement.
Web colors
There are several tones of grey available for use with HTML and CSS in word form, while there are 254 true greys available through Hex triplet. All are spelled with an a: using the e spelling can cause unexpected errors (this spelling was inherited from the X11 color list), and to this day, Internet Explorer's Trident browser engine does not recognize "grey" and will render it as green. Another anomaly is that "gray" is in fact much darker than the X11 color marked "darkgray"; this is because of a conflict with the original HTML grey and the X11 grey, which is closer to HTML's "silver". The three "slategray" colors are not themselves on the greyscale, but are slightly saturated towards cyan (green + blue). Note that since there are an even (256, including black and white) number of unsaturated tones of grey, there are actually two grey tones straddling the midpoint in the 8-bit greyscale. The color name "gray" has been assigned the lighter of the two shades (128 also known as #808080), due to rounding up.
HTML Color Name Sample Hex triplet (rendered by name) (rendered by hex triplet) gainsboro #DCDCDC lightgray #D3D3D3 gray #808080 darkgray #A9A9A9 dimgray #696969 lightslategray #778899 slategray #708090 darkslategray #2F4F4F Color coordinates
- RGB
- Grey values result when r = g = b, for the color (r, g, b)
- CMYK
- Grey values are produced by c = m = y = 0, for the color (c, m, y, k). Lightness is adjusted by varying k. In theory, any mixture where c = m = y is neutral, but in practice such mixtures are often a muddy brown (see discussion on this topic).
- HSL and HSV
- Achromatic greys have no hue, so the h code is marked as "undefined" using a dash: -- ; greys also result whenever s is 0 or undefined, as is the case when v is 0 or l is 0 or 1
See also
References
- ^ W3C TR CSS3 Color Module, HTML4 color keywords Archived 14 December 2010 at WebCite
- ^ Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 196
- ^ Marianne Celce-Murcia, Donna Brinton, and Janet M. Goodwin (1996). Teaching pronunciation: a reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 282. ISBN 9780521406949. http://books.google.com/books?id=twC-H4a8VcYC&pg=PA282.
- ^ Color Palette Archived 14 December 2010 at WebCite
- ^ "How do you spell the color Grey or Gray?". Grey or Gray. http://www.greyorgray.com/. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
External links
- Three computational biologists’ theory to explain how humans perceive achromatic colors:
- Chart showing a comparison of the achromatic (greyscale) values of the colors on the RYB and RGB color wheels, respectively (the chart is halfway down the webpage):
Color topics Color perception Color space Basic colors Related Web colorsblack gray silver white maroon red purple fuchsia green lime olive yellow navy blue teal aqua Shades of greyGrey Ash grey Battleship grey Black Cadet grey Charcoal Cool grey Davy's grey Payne's grey Silver Slate grey Taupe Purple taupe Medium taupe Rose quartz Taupe grey Timberwolf White The samples shown above are only indicative. Categories:- Shades of gray
- Color
- Optical spectrum
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