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I understand the hexadecimal system is built on 0123456789ABCDEF representing 16 degrees. 0 being the darkest up to F being a pure form of that color. But why are there 2 digits representing each color (red green blue)? And how those two digits work together to form each colors value.

Michael Petrotta
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SpeakInCode
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00 to FF represents, in decimal 0-255. 256 values, which is also the number of unique values you can represent in a single byte.

In programming, colors typically consist of 4 bytes, each with a 00-FF hexadecimal value. There's a red byte, green byte, blue byte, and there's a byte to represent the alpha channel.

Sometimes, however, rather than RGB, the three non-alpha bytes are representative of Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. The fourth one still is for the alpha channel though.

nhgrif
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It's because the colors are represented as R-G-B, each primary color have a value between 0 and 255, which makes 256 possibility. Hexadecimal is a way to write numbers, just like binary or decimal, and hexadecimal requires 2 digits (FF, to be precise) to represent 256.

Rogue
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  • Ok so essentially you multiply the two hex values to create the RGB value equivalent. For example #FFCC2B = 16 * 16 = 256, 13 * 13 = 169, 2 * 11 = 22. So #FFCC2B = rgb(255, 169, 22) right? – SpeakInCode May 18 '14 at 21:58
  • No, you have to convert each hex block one by one, which means FF = 255, CC = 204 and 2B = 43, so #FFCC2B = (255, 204, 43). You can check out on google for an hex converter, there's plenty :) – Rogue May 18 '14 at 22:31