Determining "Matching" Colors

[MerryOtter]

Hi,

I know there are various approaches to determining what colors "go" together: Analog colors, complementary colors, split-complementary colors, triad colors, monotone chromatic colors, monotone achromatic, contrasting, four- five- and six-tone chords...

Does anyone know of a reference that spells out the actual mathematical formulae for determining those variations, given a "base" color?

Thanks,

Merry

[Scotty]

I believe Jens Benthien(sp) has a color wheel on Xaraxone shareware page that does that.
Jim

[MerryOtter]

Thanks for pointing me in that direction. It's a very nicely done Xara template. However I'm really looking for the actual formulas, as opposed to a tool that will do it for me.

[timdw]

Check out the javascript in http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html - might be useful

[MerryOtter]

Thanks Tim... another cool site to add to the color matching wizards I found.

This is a really nice one implemented with SVG:
http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorschemer.html

Here is one that is very simple to use:
http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/colorwizard.asp

I am sure the formulas are in there. Math, I understand... JavaScript? Makes me wanna gnaw a limb off...

[timdw]

Here's a chart of the RGB values for the colour wheel lifted from the script. I don't know if it means anything to anyone - perhaps it would be more meaningful if the values were HSV rather than RGB? The schemes themselves are all based upon offset values from within this e.g. 180 degrees apart for contrast or +150 -150 for triad.

Here's the table:

Offset Red Green Blue
0 255 0 0
15 255 51 0
30 255 102 0
45 255 128 0
60 255 153 0
75 255 178 0
90 255 204 0
105 255 229 0
120 255 255 0
135 204 255 0
150 153 255 0
165 51 255 0
180 0 204 0
195 0 178 102
210 0 153 153
225 0 102 178
240 0 51 204
255 25 25 178
270 51 0 153
285 64 0 153
300 102 0 153
315 153 0 153
330 204 0 153
345 229 0 102