About Color

A word about COLOR: Most images in this collection were designed with the 216-color “Web safe” palette and should therefore look good when viewed with a system capable of 8-bit display (256 colors) or better. Some images (especially those with soft shadow effects) are barely acceptable in 8-bit color but look fine in 16-bit color (thousands) or better. Bear in mind that even the “Web safe” colors will dither (acquire a speckled appearance) on an 8-bit system when more than 256 colors are used on a single Web page. If you’re using a 16-color system, none of the images will look good. (Have you thought about upgrading?)

WARNING! Netscape Communicator v. 4.x (including stand-alone Navigator v. 4.x) does not handle color the same way as previous versions when viewing in 8-bit (256-color) mode. The browser forces all image colors to the 216-color “Web safe” palette and will not dither gracefully by using additional colors available on the viewer’s system. This can create unpredictable, ugly results with any image containing some colors that are not “Web safe.” The effect is very bad in grayscale images, which typically pick up undesirable blue or yellow fringing. This anomaly is especially noticeable on the Macintosh platform; it affects 8-bit Windows displays, but not to the same extent.

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