The Browser-Safe Palette

Browser-safe palette gif

As Lynda Weinman explains on her web page Non-Dithering Colors in Browsers, the major web browsers will display only 216 unique colors per page without dithering, or mixing, pixels of different colors to approximate colors not on the palette. This palette of "pure" colors is determined mathematically. Each of the three colors of the RGB system (Red/Green/Blue) is represented at hex values FFFF, CCCC, 9999, 6666, 3333, and 0000, in combination with the other two colors in a similar pattern. For each color there are six values, so:

6 X 6 X 6 = 216

The first square in the above chart, the white one, has all three colors at FFFF. The next is R=FFFF, G=FFFF, B=CCCC. The sixth is R=FFFF, G=FFFF, B=0000. The seventh is R=FFFF, G=CCCC, B=FFFF. This continues until the 216th square, the black one, in which R=0000, G=0000, B=0000. The palette is contained in a Macintosh "clut" resource (color look-up table), which represents each of the primary colors as a 16-bit binary number. Two-to-the-sixteenth = 65536, but the numbering starts with zero, so the maximum value for each of the component colors is 65535 (hex:FFFF).

In Hex, the sequence looks like this: 

    
  
  1. FFFF FFFF FFFF
  
  2. FFFF FFFF CCCC
  
  3. FFFF FFFF 9999
  
  4. FFFF FFFF 6666
  
  5. FFFF FFFF 3333
  
  6. FFFF FFFF 0000
  
  7. FFFF CCCC FFFF
  
  8. FFFF CCCC CCCC
  
  9. FFFF CCCC 9999
  
  10. FFFF CCCC 6666
  
  11. FFFF CCCC 3333
  
  12. FFFF CCCC 0000


thru

    
  
  1. 0000 3333 FFFF
  
  2. 0000 3333 CCCC
  
  3. 0000 3333 9999
  
  4. 0000 3333 6666
  
  5. 0000 3333 3333
  
  6. 0000 3333 0000
  
  7. 0000 0000 FFFF
  
  8. 0000 0000 CCCC
  
  9. 0000 0000 9999
  
  10. 0000 0000 6666
  
  11. 0000 0000 3333
  
  12. 0000 0000 0000

The advantage of creating graphics using this palette is that you can be assured that they will look pretty much the same on any browser. Lynda Weinman's page made this palette available in a form that would work with Photoshop. I've created a version that will work directly with SuperPaint and, with a little effort, with any Macintosh application that uses the "clut" resource to determine graphics palettes. This file, Browser-Safe Colors, is a SuperPaint palette file. If you are using another application that uses the "clut" resource, you can extract it from this file using ResEdit or any resource editor and embed it in the appropriate file type. To insure that you get the BinHexed file and not a screen full of text, hold down your "option" key while clicking the Browser-Safe Colors link.

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