In case you haven’t heard, but Pantone has released their colour forecast for 2013. You can check out at [http://www.pantone.com/pages/fcr.aspx?pg=21005&ca=4].
Here’s a post I never got around to finishing. Kind of surprising considering it’s a pretty simple concept.
Adobe Illustrator has a neat feature to automagically pick out inverse and complementary colours. Have you ever wondered how to do that in Photoshop or InDesign? It’s not that difficult. Here’s how I do it.
To get a complementary colour:
That is to say, if your is L: 61 a:-17 b:-46, the complementary colour is: L: 61 a:17 b:46
To invert the colour entirely, you only have to go one step further. Subtract L from 100, for example:
L: 61 a:-17 b:-46 becomes L: 39 a:17 b:46
That’s it! Happy colour-exploring.
Every now and again, I have to remind myself of the difference between additive and subtractive colour, and which colour mode, RGB or CMYK, uses which modal. The way I remind myself is with a simple rule called “which way to white.” It works like this:
Take a piece of paper that has been printed like an advertisement, presumably CMYK ink printed on a white sheet. How do you get the white colour? Take the ink away. Therefore, CMYK = subtractive.
RGB is therefore additive by deduction.
The result: CMYK = subtractive, RGB = additive, and “which way to white” helps you remember that.